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VOCAL MUSIC The voice is the most difficult »musical instrument«. On the one hand, it is completely natural because everyone has it and can sing and speak. It is part of the body and does not externalize sound production to an external instrument. On the other hand, it is the most complicated because its versatility is limitless. For composing for voice, that means answering the question of how to notate so that the singers will perform exactly what I intend. The other fundamental question is the relationship between text and music. What is in the foreground, what should I listen to? Does the music just accompany the lyrics or are they a confirmation of the music? How can a happy alliance succeed? Because of these difficulties, he started composing for the voice late, in his mid-30s. This was preceded by months of research into the tonal possibilities of the voice, notation and the history of modern voice treatment. Mon cœur mis à nu for four voices (S-Mez-TB), is a sequence of 15 miniatures that play through the various combinations from solo to quartet. Each miniature is a mini-madrigal with its own character, behind which is a text by Charles Baudelaire - from the diaries – which is not set to music, but whose phonetics form the starting point for the musical material and whose semantics are transferred to the autonomous musical language. The division into 15 (sometimes overlapping) sections allows for a classification of the abundant vocal material. In doing so, I found a form – and dramaturgy – with which “musical vocabulary” could be gained for the “super” instrument voice, which was not intended to come from instrumental music, but grew out of this specific medium. An example: The soprano solo "sets" 14 definitions of woman to music, which is why I had to find the appropriate musical figure for each of these characteristics. While in the 1990s I radically focused on the incomprehensibility of the text, I did the exact opposite with the works of the 2000s. For the choral work (24 solo parts; 6-6-6-6) voiced void I set to music in the original language a text by Moses Maimonides about the figure of the Messiah in the Jewish tradition. In its Mishneh Torah, Chapter Hilchot Melachim, Sections 11 and 12 offer an interpretation of the Messiah as not a religious figure but a political leader presiding over a just government and the messianic days of mankind - a state free from war and famine, free from envy and discord - prepared. While the double choir with two simultaneous texts makes it difficult to understand them, I have put key words (e.g. »hammelech« [»the king«], »hammashiach« [»the anointed one«], »jisrael« etc.) homophonically, like in a cadence phrase. The consonantal part of the language is specifically emphasized in order to do justice to the character of the Hebrew language and script. The biblical quotations quoted in the Maimonides text are spoken; superimposed on it, similar to a psalmody, are sentences from the Talmud about the Messiah (partially in Aramaic). In the intermezzo before the final section, the sopranos sing five movements from the book in a six-part canon canon Difficult liberte. Essais sur le Judaisme by Emmanuel Lévinas, in which the philosopher makes his interpretation of the Messiah, which I agree with. voiced void is not a religious work, but one of faith in the sense of an immovable basic conviction. In this respect, the texts have something of the severity of a legal text for me; in a way, this music has something Old Testament in it. The introit whispers the words "The birth pangs of the Messiah" ("chevlo shel mashiach"), the exodus "restoration of the world" ("tiqqun ha'olam"). The theme of my vocal sextet (SSMT-Bar-B) void – a delitto Italiano. Un epitaffio is the portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini, focusing on his gruesome murder on the night of November 2, 1975. I am referring to the film and the book Pasolini. Un delitto Italiano by Marco Tullio Giordana. Pasolini's »Execution« is surrounded by a setting of numerous sentences from his poems, so to speak. With very different texts (from spoken to sung), not only a poetic, at times madrigalesque alternative world is created, but at the same time a panorama of Pasolinian thought. I divided the texts into six thematic groups: negative, death, hope/positive, Pasolini about himself, aesthetic/ethics and silence. These texts are distributed over the entire form in such a way that a narration results. One could read the work like a libretto, like a poetic libretto, with six complete poems and countless fragments. It consists of six sections with bel canto, sung/choked voice, onomatopoeic (scream, injective action, polyphony), strained voice, voice end-products (gulps, throat clenching, creaking voice) and a swan song that always bit by bit becomes phonetic. Texts spoken or whispered are interspersed over them. Musical elements (lontano “choirs”, homophonic “chorales”, trios, solos, madrigalisms, etc.) and textual elements, theatrical so to speak (albeit invisible), combine to form a small “opera” scene. At the end, the name of Pasolini is indicated with the creaky voice of the women - a grave inscription, an epitaph. In a way, this work is my »Hommage à Pier Paolo Pasolini«. I composed the solo for New York City-based singer Jeffrey Gavett (baritone, also falsetto). Esė apie vandenis (Lithuanian: "Try about the waters") based on the poem by Anja Kampmann Try across the sea. The text appears in German (falsett) and English (normal baritone); In addition, around 50 different translations of the word "water" and onomatopoeic elements are scattered, so that the work takes place on two main and two secondary levels. In the meantime I have composed a lot for voices. Angela Nova and Angela Nova 2 appeared on CD 3 (NEOS 11211-12). finite jest for flute and soprano will appear on CD 9, Dove? for 5 voices and orchestra on CD 10. My vocal music would not have been in the world without the dedication of the singers and conductors. I owe them a great debt of gratitude for their magnificent work. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf Literature: Ferdinand Teleskop, The dandy as a structuralist – Baudelaire composed a warning head, program: [01] Mon cœur mis à nu for four voices(1997) 16:07 ExVoCo live recording [02] voiced void for 24 voices (2008) 31:06 Vocal Ensemble Stuttgart [03] void – a delitto Italiano An epitaffio for 6 voices (2009) 17:15 New vocal soloists [04] Esė apie vandenis for male voice (baritone) (2015) 14:06 Jeffrey Gavett, baritone Total playing time: 79:08 first recordings Press:
February 2020 (…) “Mon cœur mis à nu” by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf for four voices is based on the “Journaux intimes” by Charles Baudelaire. But Mahnkopf refuses to set it to music - rather, he is concerned with sounds that are at best phonetically inspired by Baudelaire and that do not identify the human voice as an "instrument" but as an independent medium. (…) Tilman Urbach
# 5_2019 (...) With the finest irony, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf phonetically processed text fragments from Charles Baudelaire's diaries into 15 madrigals. Mon cœur mis à nu (1997) is the name of the cycle, created in a phase when the composer still attached importance to the incomprehensibility of the text. In fact, vocal music only appeared relatively late in Mahnkopf's oeuvre. A reason to now dedicate an album to this genre. (…) With void – a delitto Italiano (2009) Mahnkopf dedicated an epitaph to the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was murdered in 1975. The Neue Vocalsolisten manage the delicate task of enveloping the pain point of the work – the disturbingly remembered bestiality of the crime – with poetic sequences from Pasolini's poems, with emphasis and sensitivity: a lyrical to operatic sextet, comforting in the tender dirges. The series of these first recordings ends with an opus from 2015, Esė apie vandenis (“Trial over the water”), for male voice based on a poem by Anja Kampmann. A vocal acrobatic solo: James Gavett articulates onomatopoeia, sings the English text in baritone, the German text in falsetto and connects everything into a bizarrely ebbing and flowing continuum - brilliantly. (…) Otto-Paul Burkhardt |
