The Trautonium is the focus of this CD—an electronic instrument that, since its inception, has represented the intersection of technology, sound, and artistic vision. Peter Pichler explores the historical roots of the Mixturtrautonium as well as its unbroken expressive potential in the present day.
A special document is the first complete recording of the Kantate für Sopran und elektronische Klänge (1969) by Harald Genzmer, a student of Paul Hindemith. Long considered incomplete, the work was reconstructed after the autograph score was rediscovered in the Munich State Library. The texts, taken from Hans Trausil's poetry collection Irische Harfe, revolve around lamentations for the dead and the loss of love, and refer to the mythical world of the Gaels and Vikings.
Das Unaufhörliche by Paul Hindemith is a key work of modernism in an extraordinary tonal form. The famous soprano aria from the secular oratorio appears here in a version in which all orchestral parts are played by the Mixturtrautonium – a powerful commentary on the idea of permanent change that underlies the work.
Excerpts from Paul Dessau's opera Die Verurteilung des Lukullus transport the trautonium into a tonal twilight zone: as the voice of “nothingness,” beyond heaven and hell. This original instrumentation was rarely heard for decades and only returned to the stage after German reunification.
Henry Purcell's lament When I am laid in Earth from Dido and Aeneas seems like a historical foreign body. In the arrangement for soprano and trautonium, the Baroque farewell song takes on a timeless, almost metaphysical dimension.
The program concludes with Pichler's own works Die sieben Todsünden and Die sieben Tugenden (2024): 14 concise character pieces inspired by Baroque affect theory, literature, and electronic sound research. They showcase the Trautonium as an instrument of today—versatile, expressive, and beyond stylistic categories.