Marc Kilchenmann: The versatile

Marc Kilchenmann doesn’t like to repeat himself, what he appreciates is delving deeper when he takes on a subject. For his piece Murhabala, he focussed the women’s struggle for freedom in Iran. In the musical form, overtone and undertone structures meet and clash, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in dissonant frictions.
A portrait by Friederike Kenneweg

 

The composer Marc Kilchenmann. Portrait with a hat. Foto: Paul Wyss
Der Komponist Marc Kilchenmann. © Paul Wyss

 

Friederike Kenneweg
“I don’t know exactly why, but Persia, Iran – fascinates me since I’ve been a child,” says Marc Kilchenmann. “It has also stayed very present in my life later on. I learnt a bit of Persian, watched a lot of Iranian films and read Iranian poetry. What I particularly like is the language. It is said to be the most metaphor-rich language in the world.”

When Kilchenmann finds something that he is not yet familiar with, he is delighted. This was also the case when analysing US composer Ben Johnston’s string quartets, on which he wrote his doctoral thesis. “With Johnston, I once counted fifteen different third intervals. It felt like the ground was being pulled out from under my feet. That’s great. I said to myself: I don’t know anything. Fantastic!”

 

Maths and music, Iran and Ben Johnston

These two areas of interest meet in his work Murhabala for the microtonal keyboard instrument rhesutron and string quartet. Marc Kilchenmann discovered a mathematical treatise on binomial coefficients from the 11th century Persian polymath Omar Chayyām. He uses this, as well as the harmonic concept of Utonality and Otonality by composer Harry Partch, who had a significant influence on Ben Johnston, to find his musical structure. The term ‘otonal’ refers to intervals that can be formed using the overtone series, while those that are formed with the undertone series are called ‘utonal’.

 

Marc Kilchenmann, Dominik Blum and the Quatuor Bozzini after the first night of Murhabala in Kunsthaus Walcheturm, Zürich. © Doris Kessler
The piece ‘Murhabala’ was commissioned by Dominik Blum on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Dominik Blum and Marc Kilchenmann together with the Quatuor Bozzini after the world premiere of ‘Murhabala’ in Kunsthaus Walcheturm, September 2024. © Doris Kessler

 

The Persian word Murhabala means “juxtaposition”. In his piece, Marc Kilchenmann juxtaposes utonal and otonal interval structures. The string quartet, which mainly plays sustained ground notes, only moves in the otonal harmonic space. The rhesutron plays ornamental lines and uses both otonal and utonal intervals. As the piece progresses, the harmonic structure becomes increasingly complex. When the overtone series is combined with the undertone series, perfectly pure-sounding intervals are in some cases created. Mostly, however, tones meet at a distance that lies outside the traditional tonal system.

 


Murhabala for Rhesutron and string quartet, Recording 23.9.2024 in the Kantonsschule Küsnacht. Dominik Blum and Quatuor Bozzini

 

Waves like revolutionary movements

“You can listen to my piece in a very linear way, but you can also pay close attention to the harmony, you can just follow the string instruments or simply let your mind wander,” says Marc Kilchenmann. One thought that occupied him while composing were the women in Iran, who are constantly fighting against oppression and for their freedom. The harmonic connections that result from the structure of Murhabala resemble wave structures that are reminiscent of the ups and downs of protest being defeated and then re-strengthened. Marc Kilchenmann would like to emphasise this aspect even more clearly in the next version. “The waves that I actually imagined, this perseverance, this coming back again and again, that’s something that I don’t hear enough of in the piece. I’m going to emphasise that even more.”

 

The unfamiliar and the unknown

As intensively as Marc Kilchenmann has now explored overtones and undertones, his next composition will probably be about something completely different. After all, it is the unknown that appeals to him time and time again. “I would like to study something completely different again. I probably won’t do that now, because time is also finite. But I like dealing with completely different things and experiencing this unfamiliarity again: That’s a nicer state than knowing everything already. What could one expect from life then?”
Friederike Kenneweg

Omar Chayyām, Ben Johnston, Harry Partch, Quatuor Bozzini

neo-profile
Marc Kilchenmann, Dominik Blum, Kunstraum Walcheturm

 

Composer Hermann Meier, an unconventional avant-gardist

Hermann Meier (1906-2002) was a school teacher in the village of Zullwil in the so-called Schwarzbubenland and had five children to feed. Despite all this, he always found time to work on his unusual compositions – even if initially merely destined to sit on a shelf, as he experienced no major successes or performances during his lifetime. His legacy has been analysed by musicologist Michelle Ziegler.

An interview with Friederike Kenneweg.

 

Ausschnitt aus dem grafischen Plan von Hermann Meier für sein Stück für zwei Klaviere HMV44 aus dem Jahr 1958. Vergilbtes Papier mit Linien, darauf mit Buntstift in rot, schwarz und blau eingetragene Flächen-
A section of the graphic plan for a piano piece by Hermann Meier from 1958 (HMV44). Hermann Meier called these plans ‘Mondriane’, which he created from the 1950s onwards before he worked out the pieces in musical notation. The composer’s legacy has been at the Paul Sacher Foundation since 2009 – and with it a large number of these prints, rolled up and stowed away in boxes. © Paul Sacher Stiftung.

 

Friederike Kenneweg
‘It all started when I first heard Hermann Meier’s during a concert back in 2011,’ recalls Michelle Ziegler, ‘I was immediately fascinated by it.’ Back then, Tamriko Kordzaia and Dominik Blum played Hermann Meier’s Thirteen Pieces for Two Pianos from 1959.
‘These are thirteen separate sections with very different characters. At that time, I was already working on the realisation of artistic ideas in music, and I found this to be consistently implemented here.’

 

 


The Thirteen Pieces for Two Pianos reveal the multifaceted nature of Hermann Meier’s music, which can be loud and direct, but also delicate and sometimes humorous. Tamriko Kordzaia, Dominik Blum, Concert 19th of May 2011, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, produced by SRG/SSR.
When Michelle Ziegler learned that the composer’s works were sitting largely unexplored at the Paul Sacher Foundation and that there all kinds of graphic plans were to be discovered there, she found her dissertation project. “That ended up being the focus of my project: Meier’s piano music and his pictorial notation.”

 

 Die Musikwissenschaftlerin Michelle Ziegler bei einer Führung durch die Ausstellung "Mondrian-Musik. Die graphischen Welten des Komponisten Hermann Meier". © Daniel Allenbach/HKB
Michelle Ziegler during a guided tour of the’Mondrian-Musik exhibition. The graphic worlds of composer Hermann Meier’ (Kunstmuseum Solothurn, October 2017 – February 2018) © Daniel Allenbach/HKB. .

 

Notes in school notebooks

In order to be able to read Meier’s notes, Michelle Ziegler even learnt a special shorthand writing. The composer, who had unlimited access to exercise books as a primary school teacher, constantly recorded his thoughts in this form: on music, contemporary art and the progress of his work.
‘You could almost call him a graphomaniac,’ says Michelle Ziegler. The large number of exercise books, plans and sheet music that are now in the Paul Sacher Foundation could keep one busy for a lifetime.

 

At odds with his time’s music scene

The fact that, despite his constant productivity, Hermann Meier received little recognition during his lifetime is due to his unconventional compositional path. He had been studying twelve-tone music on his own since the 1930s and initially found a sympathetic teacher in Wladimir Vogel after the Second World War. However, he increasingly turned away from it, first finding an even more radical approach to serial composition and finally, inspired by the visual arts of Piet Mondrian and Hans Arp, moving on to work with sound surfaces. From 1955 onwards, Meier worked with graphic plans in which he visually sketched the structure that he later translated into musical notation.
His way of composing encountered little understanding at the time. Although endeavouredly searching for performance opportunities, he only received rejections, but nevertheless continued to compose unwaveringly, although only for the shelves.

 

Der Komponist Hermann Meier 1979 in Yverdon am Klavier.
Hermann Meier 1979 in Yverdon. © Privat

 

Sound as canvas

Keyboard instruments play a central role in the Meier’s work, as he was himself a very good pianist. A work that Michelle Ziegler particularly appreciates is the 1958 piece for two pianos (Hermann Meier-Verzeichnis HMV 44).
“This is a stunning piece in my opinion. I can listen to it again and again and always hear different things.”

 

 


In the piece for two pianos HMV 44 written in 1958, here played by von Tamriko Kordzaia and Dominik Blum, Hermann Meier experimented with three structural elements dots, lines and areas.

 

 

Ausschnitt aus dem graphischen Plan zu dem Stück für zwei Klaviere HMV44 von Hermann Meier aus dem Jahr 1958. Auf vergilbten Karopapier sind schwarze, blaue und rote Flächen eingezeichnet, mit Bleistift Anmerkungen des Komponisten verzeichnet. © Paul-Sacher-Stiftung, Basel
Detail of the graphic plan for the piece for two pianos HMV 44, in which the three formal elements dots, lines and areas are expressed in different colours. Dots are red, lines blue and areas black. © Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel

 

Late recognition:Klangschichten’

The fact that Meier’s efforts to have his works performed did not bear fruit was also due to the fact that they were too difficult for the instrumentalists of the time. It is therefore not surprising that the composer turned to electronic music. In 1976, at the age of seventy, he indeed succeeded in realising his first work for tape, Klangschichten, in the SWF experimental studio – with which he was awarded a prize in December of the same year.

 

A new style in his later years

From 1984 onwards, pianist and composer Urs Peter Schneider took an interest in Hermann Meier’s music and premiered some of his works as part of the ‘Neue Horizonte Bern’ concert series.

 


Piano piece for Urs Peter Schneider, played by Gilles Grimaitre
With the late opportunity to see his instrumental pieces performed, Hermann Meier once again developed a new style. Michelle Ziegler discovers this, for example, in the Piano Piece for Urs Peter Schneider from 1987.
Concert HKB Bern 2017, SRG/SSR Eigenproduktion.

 

“The rhythm as well as the element of duration became very important. By then he was already over eighty and changed his composing considerably because he became even more fascinated by other aspects.”

In the meantime, Hermann Meier’s work has received a fair amount of attention. In 2018, his piece for large orchestra and piano four hands from 1965 was premiered at the Donaueschingen Music Festival. Michelle Ziegler particularly enjoys concerts like this. “It’s important to me that Hermann Meier’s music doesn’t just remain on paper, it should be heard.”
Friederike Kenneweg
 

 
The Paul Sacher Stiftung has organised and restored the composers archives and compiled a catalogue. Composer and bassoonist Marc Kilchenmann made the sheet music available as a facsimile edition published by aart Verlag.
Pianist Dominik Blum has recorded the complete works for piano solo by Hermann Meier from 1948 onwards.
Michelle Ziegler published the volume Musikalische Geometrie. Die bildlichen Modelle und Arbeitsmittel im Klavierwerk Hermann Meiers and, together with Heidy Zimmermann and Roman Brotbek, the catalogue for the exhibition Mondrian-Musik. Die graphischen Welten des Komponisten Hermann Meier.

 

Sendung SRF Kultur:
Kontext, 10.1.2018: Hermann Meier, ein lang verkannter Musikpionier, Autor Moritz Weber

neo-profile:
Hermann Meier, Urs Peter Schneider, Gilles Grimaître, Tamriko Kordzaia, Dominik Blum, Marc Kilchenmann