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Bernhard Guenter (Germany, 1957), a student of Pierre Boulez (1980), has become
the guru of digital, subsonic minimalism, approaching silence.
He sculpts sub-atomic soundtracks that pick up the sounds from the crevices
between one quantum event and the next one.
Un Peu De Neige Salie (Selektion, 1993 - Table Of The Elements, 1996)
is a five-part work of musique concrete that manipulates noises of ordinary life to the point that they become unrecognizable, and then turns them into cold, dark, monolithic structures of silence, terrible depths from which there
emerge unidentified and barely-audible bursts of sound.
(The tracks Untitled II/92 and Untitled III/92 would
subsequently merge into Whiteout of Tokyo).
Details Agrandis (Selektion, 1994 - Table Of The Elements, 1999)
contains three lengthy pieces (dedicated to Jim O'Rourke, Richard Long, Giancarlo Toniutti), which relish high-pitched tones and barren slow-motion soundscapes.
The music was barely alive, helping establish the "micro-sound" genre.
After
Home Unspeakable (Trente Oiseaux, 1996), a collaboration with John Duncan,
and
Univers/ Temporel/ Espoir (Trente Oiseaux, 1999), that
reworked older compositions such as Un Lieu Pareil A Un Point Efface' (1997) and The Ant Moves (1996), which appeared on compilations,
the impressionistic, zen-like nature of his art revealed itself on the
mini-albums Buddha With The Sun Face / Buddha With The Moon Face (Digital Narcis, 1999)
and Slow Gestures / Ceremonie Desir (Trente Oiseaux, 1999).
Brown, Blue, Brown On Blue (Trente Oiseaux, 2000), dedicated to painter Mark Rothko,
and
Time, Dreaming Itself (Trente Oiseaux, 2000)
were more complex and (relatively speaking) lively works, frequently reminiscent
of Morton Feldman.
Then Silence (Trente Oiseaux, 2001), dedicated to
Morton Feldman and Luigi Nono, continued this new phase of sonic exploration,
"active" rather than "passive";
and Crossing The River (Trente Oiseaux, 2001) closed this tetralogy with
a calm ocean of cryptic frequencies, roamed by microtonal two-note patterns.
The two-disc set Monochrome White - Polychrome (On Line, 2001) is mainly
devoted to Monochrome White, whose dogma was:
"only use high frequency spectra to lift it off the ground, so to speak... only use empty intervals (4ths and 9ths) ... to keep it harmonically floating and suspended."
Polychrome is a "remixed version" of the same composition.
A further degradation of the same composition appears on the two-disc set Monochrome Rust - Differential (On Line, 2002), dedicated to Morton Feldman, With Richard Chartier and Steve Roden.
Guenter explores the wadded ripples of the
inner space, letting micro-accidents compose subliminal, sub-ambient music.
Guenter's music would be an ideal soundtrack for the quantum fluctuations that
surface in the vacuum.
Particles/Waves, on the split album Japan (Trente Oiseaux, 2001) with Steve Roden, returns to his original, hyper-minimalist style.
Redshift - Abschied (Trente Oiseaux, 2002) contains two compositions, the former a calm, determined study of static textures, and the latter a
highly-degraded chamber piece whose instruments are barely emitting sounds.
+ Minus (Trente Oiseaux, 2004) and
Message Urgent (Trente Oiseaux, 2004)
are both mediocre collaborations with two improvisers.
Ataraxia (Trente Oiseaux, 2005) is a collaboration between Guenter on
various kinds of shakuhachi and cymbalon player Heribert Friedl.
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