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Composing for string quartet with the Arditti Quartet

Gabrielle Weber: workshop with Arditti Quartet at ZHdK

The London-based Arditti Quartet is synonymous with contemporary music for string quartet. Since 1974, the ensemble led by violinist Irvine Arditti, dedicates itself entirely to the contemporary repertoire, both through concerts and recordings as well as in its work with young composers. At the end of February, during a stop on the quartet’s 50th anniversary concert tour, I accompanied the four musicians to a public workshop at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

 

Das Arditti Quartett at the Lecture Performance with Isabel Mundry at ZHdK, 28.2.2024 Foto zVg. ZHdK

 

Gabrielle Weber
In a conversation on the evening before the workshop, after a lecture performance, Irvine Arditti tells me that “a piece is good when it fills time and space well’. The lively star violinist with the characteristic grey mop of curls is always somewhat ambiguous and humorous. The music has to ‘work’, regardless of style or type. He is very open regarding quality criteria: ‘We have played many good and many bad pieces. New pieces must first be given the chance to be played. Only then does it become apparent if they are good or bad’.

 

‘A piece is good when it fills time and space well’

The Arditti Quartet offers precisely such opportunities. Irvine Arditti, first violinist and founder, Lucas Fels, cello, Ashot Sargsyan, second violin and Ralf Ehlers, viola, are curious about young musicians and promote them in a targeted manner. They teach enthusiastically, whether at international festivals such as the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music or at music academies such as the ZHdK.

At the lecture performance, they first explained the general challenges of notating and rehearsing new pieces for string quartet, using pieces by composers renowned for their complex compositional style, like Iannis Xenakis and Helmut Lachenmann, and which they had premiered together.


In a lecture performance, the Arditti Quartet exemplified the challenges of composing for string quartet using the piece ‘Tetras’ (1983) by Iannis Xenakis, SRG/SSR 2023.

 

Together with nine composition students, they rehearsed their new pieces for the final concert the following day. Almost all of them world premieres. Rehearsals take place publicly in the large concert hall.

Schmerzquartett is the title of Franziska Eva Wilhelm’s composition. Wilhelm comes from Munich and has been studying composition with Isabel Mundry in Zurich since autumn 2021. Born in 2003, she is one of the youngest participants in the workshop.

 

Portrait Franziska Eva Wilhelm © Franziska Eva Wilhelm

 

“Pain has a lot to do with friction in my opinion and the sound of string instruments is also created by a kind of friction,” says Wilhelm. “Pain is a difficult subject and I didn’t want to romanticise it. I’m interested in the perception of pain and how it can be embodied in music: rather through texture, than a story”.

 

Humour is a must

On one hand there’s concentration and work, but also a lot of laughter: At one point, the musicians lose their bearings in the score and Lucas Fels lightens things up with an episode: ‘New York, Carnegie Hall!’ was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s loud reply in the middle of a concert he was conducting when a musician asked where they were. Humour relieves tension and brings the composers together.

 


Schmerzquartett by Franziska Wilhelm is about the texture of pain, première by Arditti Quartet,  ZHdK, 1.3.2024.

“That’s all? How’s that?” asks Irvine Arditti at the end of the Schmerzquartett rehearsal, laughing once more. Wilhelm is satisfied, but would like to try out more, which is carried out without question.

Her conclusions after the rehearsal: “I have learnt a lot about specific notations. They leave nothing to chance and if there is something to be decided, the person who composed decides. As a composer, I have to know exactly what I want and be able to communicate it”.

 

Das Arditti Quartett at concert at the main hall of the ZHdK on March 1, 2024. Photo courtesy of ZHdK.

 

Translating notated ideas into sound as precisely as possible

In premières, the quartet always endeavours to translate the notated ideas as precisely as possible into sound. This applies just as much to big names as it does to young, yet unknown musicians, says Irvine Arditti. Several hundred string quartets have been dedicated to the ensemble over the past 50 years and the Arditti quartet has worked on most of them with the composers directly.

“I really want to play the piece the way you want it to sound,” he says again and again during rehearsals, for example to Andrzej Ojczenasz.

Ojczenasz clarifies any last-minute notation errors in advance. This is appreciated. For example, the cello should play an octave lower in the very first bar. “That’s a good start,” the musicians comment with a laugh.

His quartet Maris Stella is inspired by Gregorian chant. “The structure is based on the counterpoint of the chorale. I combine tradition with the present,” the composer explains.

 

Portrait Andrzej Ojczenasz zVg. Andrzej Ojczenasz

 

Ojczenasz comes from Poland. After studying at the Krysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow, he continued his education at the University of Louisville (USA) and is now completing a master’s degree in composition with Isabel Mundry.

 

Major notation errors may occur

Ashot Sargsyan uncovers a more serious notation error a little later: You have to write exactly what you aim to hear, he says. At the same time, you can feel that the musicians are convinced by the piece. The rehearsal atmosphere is trusting and Ojczenasz gladly accepts the correction.

 


Maris Stella by Andrzej Ojczenasz is based on Gregorian chant, recording of the première by Arditti Quartett, ZHdK, 1.3.2024.

 

Towards the end of the rehearsal, Irvine Arditti asks him as well if he liked it: “Yes, but…’”- He would also like to correct a few passages.

Ojczenaszs summarises his learning as follows: “Write it down precisely, then it will be played like that! And: always be honest with yourself and your message without wanting to portray someone else.”
Gabrielle Weber

The Arditti Quartet in concert at the main hall of the ZHdK on March 1, 2024. Photo courtesy of ZHdK.

 

At the final concert on March 1, 2024, in the main concert hall of the ZHdK, the following were heard:
Wojciech Chalpuka: Wohin jetzt? (UA)
Luis Escobar Cifuentes: Ewige Leben (UA)
Wenjie Hu: The Rift (UA)
Amir Liberson: Emptiness (UA)
Franziska Eva Wilhelm: Schmerzquartett (UA)
Nuño Fernández Ezquerra: Lienzo de Luz (2021)
Fabienne Jeannine Müller: Incertain (UA)
Pengyi Li: … Echo … (UA)
Andrzej Ojczenasz: Maris Stella (UA)
Isabel Mundry: Linien, Zeichnungen (2004)

broadcasts SRF Kultur:
Musik unserer Zeit, 3.4.&14.8.2024: Streichquartett heute, Das Arditti Quartett orund der Nachwuchs, editor Gabrielle Weber
Neue Musik im Konzert, 3.4.&14.8.2024: Das Arditti Quartett im Konzert mit jungen Komponierenden, editor Gabrielle Weber

neo-profiles:
Arditti Quartet, Isabel Mundry, Franziska Eva Wilhelm, Andrzej Ojczenasz, Wojciech Chalpuka, Luis Escobar Cifuentes, Wenjie Hu, Amir Liberson, Nuño Fernández Ezquerra, Fabienne Jeannine Müller, Pengyi Li

 

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Sonic Matter: what matters is the sound

Sonic Matter – Festival for Experimental Music takes place for the second time this year from 1 to 4 December in Zurich. Under the multi-literal motto Rise, the festival points beyond itself. One focus being on music creation in sub-Saharan Africa.

Friedemann Dupelius
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with”, writes philosopher Donna Haraway. The Zurich festival Sonic Matter understands sound as something that matters. With sound and music, we can think about things that transcend it. Sound can be a gateway to the world, listening a way of reflecting and engaging with our environment. In the second edition of the festival, which succeeded the Zürcher Tage für Neue Musik in 2021, this perspective becomes apparent.

Recordings for “Play the Village” with Manon Fantini, Léo Collin and people from Horgen near Zürich

With “Rise”, the middle word of the motto triad Turn – Rise – Leap now provides the guiding thought impulse: “This can be understood in the sense of growing or emerging – or also as something resistant, rebellious, that aims at expanding boundaries,” Lisa Nolte explains. She, too, is part of a triad. Together with composer Katharina Rosenberger and artist and curator Julie Beauvais, they form of the core team behind Sonic Matter since its conception in 2021. The subtitle “Platform for Experimental Music” makes two things clear: Sonic Matter thinks beyond the boundaries of a festival. It is not over after four dense days, but sees itself as an ongoing process. In addition, the term “experimental” signals aesthetic breadth. According to Lisa Nolte, the aim is “to have as much scope as possible for sound-based current art forms”. On the one hand, there are formats with contemporary music as it has established itself in Europe – with for example, the Tonhalle Orchestra performing music by Peter Ruzicka and George Enescu, or Collegium Novum Zurich playing Iannis Xenakis’ Φλέγρα (Phlegra) alongside a world premiere by Laure M. Hiendl. But Lisa Nolte adds: “New music is often about a very specific idea of quality, which is not to be found everywhere. Other approaches can be very stimulating.”


Iannis Xenakis – Φλέγρα (Phlegra) (1975), played by Ensemble Phoenix Basel

Listening, thinking and dreaming with archives

These approaches can come from other forms of music and art, or even from places in the world that have long received too little attention. The duo Listening at Pungwe from South Africa and Zimbabwe, for example, has a very unique artistic approach to sound. Memory Biwa and Robert Machiri collect music and field recordings from their home regions. They understand this material as a sound archive whose contents they put in a new context during their performances and listening sessions. The eponymous term “Pungwe” is reminiscent of the ritual of a wake, during which those who attend are in a particularly alert state – a state that also makes it possible to dream of a better future or to motivate oneself for uprising.

A Live-Session by Listening at Pungwe in Kapstadt 2017

Sound and music archives are indeed such a “Matter” with which other “Matters”, like things or topics can be thought about. Collected sound recordings contain information about history, social and political circumstances and much more, offering the possibility of imagining and dreaming about how the world could be. In this sense, the students in the Once Upon A Sound project with Roman Bruderer, Peter Nussbaumer and Iva Sanjek have created their own sound archives, which they will present at the festival during dedicated listening sessions and DJ sets.

The people of all ages who worked with artists Léo Collin and Manon Fantini also sharpened their ears to the sounds of their surroundings, resulting in the installation Play The Village. In the joint listening sessions with the cozy title Soft Pillows – Hot Ears, the focus is also on listening together. Moroccan artist Abdellah M. Hassak will present an entire symphony of archives in the Walcheturm art space.


Noémi Büchi plays “live from the Listening Lounge” (3.12.) at Kunstraum Walcheturm

Another focus of Sonic Matter 2022 is the sub-Saharan region of Africa. In addition to Pungwe, artists from the Ugandan music festival and label Nyege Nyege will be in Zurich. Label founder Rey Sapienz, for example, will be DJing at the party in the Gessnerallee, stating what Lisa Nolte already knows: “Listening is an active procedure, which also becomes apparent when music puts you directly into physical movement.” Dancing is also Sonic Matter – a sonic experience and the moment when sound becomes embodied matter. Latefa Wiersch, Rhoda Davids Abel and Dandara Modesto tell of dreams and longings for the lost African homeland in their interdisciplinary performance Neon Bush Girl Society, exploring legends of the fled ethnic groups Nama and Damara from southern Africa.

Neon Bush Girl Society

Sonic Matter is always

Sub-Saharan Africa 2022 is prominently featured also in the Open Lab. With this permanent format, Sonic Matter emphasises that it takes place 365 days a year. At the Open Lab, experts from various fields, like arts, science and civil society work together on urgent issues in their respective regions of the world. The individual projects deal with indigenous peoples in Uganda and Mozambique, the cultural and political life of South Sudanese refugees in Kenya or historical sounds in Johannesburg. The online platform is continuously updated. Another project that keeps the sound and thought processes going around the clock is Sonic Matter Radio, as Sonic Matter is not only four exciting days of music, sound and art in Zurich – it is also a permanent state of listening, thinking and narrating around the globe. According to Donna Haraway, narratives create the world: “It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories”.
Friedemann Dupelius

Sonic Matter: 1.-4.12.2022 in Zürich
Sonic Matter Radio, Sonic Matter Open Lab

Partner festival 2022:
Nyege Nyege (Uganda)

SRF 2 Kultur:
Sonic Matter 2021 at neoblog @neo.mx3
SRF report on Sonic Matter 2021

Donna Haraway, Roman Bruderer, Laure M. Hiendl, Latéfa Wiersch, Manon Fantini, Rey Sapienz, Listening at Pungwe

neo profiles:
Sonic Matter, Katharina Rosenberger; Iannis Xenakis; Léo Collin; Collegium Novum, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Olga Kokcharova, Noémi Büchi

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Super instruments and beautiful monsters – Xenakis turns 100

Xenakis-Tage Zürich will take place on May 28 and 29 2022, to mark Iannis Xenakis’ 100th birthday. The festival was initiated by the musicologist Peter Révai, who managed to bring Iannis Xenakis to Zurich in 1986, during the “concert series with computer music” founded by Révai. The three concerts of the Xenakis-Tage present a wide range of the composer’s work.

 

 

Portrait Iannis Xenakis 1973 © les amis de Xenakis

 

Cécile Olshausen
Composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is usually defined as follows: Greek resistance fighter with a severe facial injury, Le Corbusier’s assistant (later also competitor), and musical mathematician. His daughter Mâkhi brings another and surprising aspect into play, reporting that her father was actually a romantic and that Johannes Brahms was his favourite composer. The book that Mâkhi Xenakis wrote about her father in 2015 is soon to be published in German and co-editor Thomas Meyer will present it in Zurich. Father and daughter were bound by a loving but also ambivalent relationship. Xenakis absolutely wanted his daughter to follow the mathematical and scientific path, with art coming later; just as he had exemplified. As a compromise, Mâkhi Xenakis studied architecture, but she became a sculptor and painter.

So apparently Xenakis loved Brahms while developing his visionary sound worlds. He worked with electronic music and percussion because he saw a great potential for sounds that had never been heard before.

 


Iannis Xenakis often worked with percussion, an instrument in which he saw great potential for new sounds, Rebonds B for percussion (1987-1989), Marianna Bednarska, Lucerne Festival 22.8.2019, SRG/SSR production

 

But he also transformed one of the most traditional genres, the string quartet, into something new. His string quartets will be performed in their entirety in Zurich by the Arditti Quartet, for whom Xenakis composed three of the four quartets. A tour de force, because the works are extremely difficult to play.


«Superinstrument» String Quartet

Goethe Bonmot’s statement that one hears “four reasonable people talking among themselves” in a string quartet does not match these works. Xenakis breaks with almost each and every tradition of the string quartet. There is no exchange of musical thoughts, no development of motifs, no individual statements. Rather, Xenakis seems to be writing for a single, intricate “super instrument”, tracing and racing through the entire tonal space, from extremely low to pointedly high, constantly changing timbres with tremoli, pizzicati of all kinds and “col legno” parts, i.e. notes played or struck with the wooden part of the bow. And above all: the four string players whiz their fingers across the fingerboards, leaving trails of fire behind. Especially in the first two quartets (ST/4 and Tetras), the glissando is Xenakis’ favourite musical medium. With it, he creates a fascinating weightlessness of sound. Xenakis also realised this floating in his architecture: the Philips Pavilion he designed for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, with its bold curves, is glissando music cast in concrete.

 


In Phlegra for ensemble from 1975 Xenakis’ fondness for glissandi can be heard well, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Dir. Jürg Henneberger, Gare du Nord, 3.11.2018, SRG/SSR production

 

Rarities will also be part of the Xenakis-Tage Zürich and they reveal a completely different side of his oeuvre, namely chamber music reminiscent of folk music. These compositions belong to Xenakis’ early days. The composer was born in Romania and the very first music he heard as a child was folk music, played in the coffee houses and on the radio of his native city Brăila. That is why traditional Romanian and Greek music finds an echo in his early chamber music works.

Another aspect of Xenakis’ work will be featured during a matinée on Sunday morning in the Pavillon Le Corbusier, with his last electronic composition: GENDY3 from 1991, where Xenakis’ great dream of a composing automaton became reality. In GENDY3, the computer uses random operations to control not only the sound events, i.e. rhythm, pitch and tone sequence, but also the timbres. Compared to some of today’s computer-generated music, which is not meant to sound like a computer at all, GENDY3 embraces the fact that a machine is in charge, roaring and squeaking and humming. Xenakis once said that he hoped his music would not sound “like a monster”. But GENDY3 does sound like a living thing – a fantastic, beautiful monster.
Cécile Olshausen

 

Portrait Iannis Xenakis 1988 © Horst Tappe

Les amis de Xenakis, Iannis Xenakis, Johannes Brahms, Mâkhi Xenakis, Thomas Meyer, Arditti Quartet, Le Corbusier, Philips Pavilion, Peter Révai, Pavillon Le Corbusier

 

Xenakis Tage Zürich, 28. and 29. May 2022

mentioned events:
Saturday 28. May, 20:00, Concert String Quartets, Arditti Quartet, Vortragssaal Kunsthaus Zürich
Sunday 29. May, 11:00, Concert and discussion, GENDY3, Pavillon Le Corbusier
Sunday 29. May, 18:00, Concert introduction with Thomas Meyer / Concert Chamber Music, Swiss Chamber Soloists, Kirche St. Peter Zürich

radio programs SRF 2 Kultur:
Musik unserer Zeit, Wednesday, 25.5.2022, 20:00, Musik und Architektur – Iannis Xenakis zum 100 Geburtstag, editor Cécile Olshausen
Musik unserer Zeit, Wednesday, 23.6.2021, 20:00, Nackte Wucht: Iannis Xenakis’ “Metastasis”, editor Moritz Weber

neo-profiles:
Iannis Xenakis, Arditti Quartet