Tage Alter Musik in Herne 2024
REDUCE – REUSE – RECYCLE
In Paraguay, there is the "Recycled Orchestra," founded by musician and environmental technician Favio Chavez. He went into the slums of Cateura, where people live from recycling what they find at the landfill. The instruments of the Recycled Orchestra are also made from such materials: a violin made from cans, wooden spoons, and metal forks; a saxophone made from a drainage pipe; the body of a cello made from an oil barrel. A solo suite by Johann Sebastian Bach sounds surprisingly sonorous played on these instruments, as can be seen in the documentary "Landfill harmonic." It is hard to tell what to admire more about Chavez's initiative: the heightened awareness of environmental issues, the social-pedagogical impulse, or simply the act of the wondrous transformation of materials.
At the TAGEN ALTER MUSIK IN HERNE, we also hold many transformations under the motto "Reduce – Reuse – Recycle." But rather those found in the notes, not in the instruments. Apart from the fact that the use of historical instruments, whether original or replicas, as is common with today's Early Music ensembles, already represents a kind of up-cycling process. If "recycling" means true repurposing, then Bach's appropriation of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater" is such an instance, as he enriched the already famous work musically at his time and made it into a liturgical piece for Protestant worship in the form of the psalm cantata "Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden" (B'Rock Orchestra on November 15). The so-called "English" Suites were written by the young Bach in Weimar for his own use to demonstrate his pianistic abilities. The d-minor prelude of the 6th Suite stands out in this collection with its monumental dimensions. It is a mix of fugue and Italian concerto with a quasi-improvisational beginning. This is far removed from the French models for a "Prélude" to a Suite and is virtually the opposite of a "reduction." However, it is a typical way for Bach to appropriate: the attentive, ingeniously developing engagement with the musical universes of his time (Mahan Esfahani on November 17).
An art production that meets the highest standards while also utilizing the past can already be found in the late Middle Ages in the "Ars subtilior." Here, the principles of isorhythm and chromaticism were pushed to the limit, resulting in a density of expression that still fascinates today (Tasto Solo on November 15).
To put it a bit exaggeratedly, the Renaissance era is the first vintage movement. At the end of this period in Italy, they wanted to resurrect the songs of ancient Greece with the invention of monody. During this time, a composer like Antonio de Cabezón displayed a different kind of creativity by appropriating popular folk songs, which he used for contrapuntal pieces in his Tientos (Capella de la Torre on November 16).
However, there are also examples of true repurposing in music history. The poet and musician Aquilino Coppini, who served under the Milanese Cardinal Federico Borromeo, selected the most suitable pieces from Claudio Monteverdi's madrigal books and provided them with new spiritual verses. The special part: these texts are a kind of spiritual translation of the secular madrigal poetry and retain their phonemes, accents, and rhythms. Thus, on the level of poetry, it is also a form of re- or further utilization (Voces Suaves on November 17).
It seems like a waste of creative energies when two composers and rivals like Giacomo Antonio Perti and Giacomo Cesare Predieri deliver an artistic duel on Good Friday 1704 in Bologna, performing passion oratorios with very similar concepts in text and musical design in two opposing churches at the same hour. A few years later, Perti reflected on a kind of musical economy or even restoration of a musically-ecological balance: he mixed his music with parts of his colleague's score, which was still seen as an act of appreciation in the 18th century and not as a violation of copyright (Arsenale Sonoro on November 16).
Charles Burney wrote about Franz Benda, the concertmaster of Frederick the Great, that he had earned great fame not just through his "expressive manner" of playing the violin but also through his "very beautiful and charming compositions for this instrument." The different ways Benda envisioned the solo voice in his sonatas can be seen in the two alternative versions of the violin part in a manuscript by his master student Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, which has been preserved for posterity. During performances, repeating a section of a movement as part of a recycling process creates a new compositional shape (Ludus Instrumentalis on November 14).
In polyphonic music, one expects that the construction of harmonies can only be understood and preserved if it is precisely noted. In reality, however, polyphony developed in the Middle Ages from an improvisational practice. There were also rules for this. But successful music-making could only happen if the singers had the ability to continue using and transforming the given chant melody in an ad hoc realization. A musical event that, for example, pilgrims could experience in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Per-Sonat on November 16).
Finally, everything comes together in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Reuse" in an ideological sense, as his "Idomeneo" still stands in the tradition of Gluck's reform operas; "Reduce," as the composer did not shy away from cutting the work during the rehearsal phase without hesitation (in Herne, the Munich premiere version from 1781 will be performed); "Recycling," as Mozart concentrated the sequences of recitatives and arias from Italian opera and of choir and ballet scenes from French opera on the essentials and thus created his original operatic style (Helsinki Baroque Orchestra on November 17).
In the program of the TAGEN ALTER MUSIK IN HERNE, it is not only about such dramaturgical peculiarities but also and above all about exciting concert experiences with ensembles coming from all over Europe, almost all making their debut at our festival. In the cultural radio WDR 3, they will find an overregional audience in the live broadcasts and concert programs, which continue into January, and later in the takeovers by the European Broadcasting Union, an international audience.
Additionally, current journalistic programs such as WDR 3 Tonart and Tafel-Confect from BR-KLASSIK are on-site and invite the audience to their live broadcasts on Friday afternoon and Sunday noon.
A ticket grants access to all concerts of the Tage Alter Musik in Herne 2024.
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