Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit | Christian Ofenbauer | NEOS – your online music store for contemporary music and special classics

CHRISTIAN OFENBAUER · DESTRUCTION OF THE ROOM / OF TIME

As enigmatically abstract and hermetically beautiful as Christian Ofenbauer’s music may occasionally be, so sensitively does it nevertheless react to the context in which it is created, to the performers for whom it is conceived, to its contextual framework. Granted, everything composed communicates, even if through an ostensible refusal to express itself. Yet Ofenbauer has numerous series of works that could even intertwine and whose components are interrelated, such as the series of BruchStücke (“BrokenPieces”) and the six Streichquartettsätze (“String Quartet Movements”); compositions that enter into a musical exchange, refer to each other or diverge, in which common ideas are renegotiated and events developed further.

This also applies to the three musical entities with the collective title Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit (“Destruction of the Room / of Time”), that quotes the stage directions for the final scene of Bertolt Brecht’s Fatzer material: a work for string quartet from 1999 (therefore comprising part of the complete recording of the Streichquartettsätze by the Arditti Quartet, NEOS 11513-14); also, a piano piece from the same year and a composition written in 2000 for these two instrumentations combined, i. e. a piano quintet. Now, for the first time, the latter two works have been recorded for this double CD by Johannes Marian and the Quatuor Diotima in conjunction, quasi as musical counterparts.

Smouldering discomfort /
About its function in theatre …

What does one envision herein: a room, broken by time? Is it a speculative mathematical relationship? Or could it mean the ageing of a room, its gradually progressing decay? And what would be the destruction of this procedure? The suspension of time, its expiration being halted?

It is no coincidence that these ongoing questions revolve around the central themes facing Ofenbauer as a composer. A widely recognised external sign of this is his making the year of composition an integral part of his titles. Respectively, it seems only logical that he has come to regard the two pieces presented here as “early music”. However, his work also behaves structurally, with premeditation, in respect to time; indeed, wants to push this into our awareness: on the one hand, by making the transgression of his works audible, or, on the other hand, by giving the impression that they might toy with time, compressing, stretching, or even bringing it to a standstill. This leads us to the historical origin of the acoustic triptych Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit because it is based on stage music.

In 1999, Lutz Graf staged Ödön von Horváth’s drama Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (“Tales from the Vienna Woods”) at the Graz Schauspielhaus, which deals with the social, political and economic situation around 1930, with its inherent lack of any hope of improvement. At that time it was already clear that Graf would also direct the premiere of Ofenbauer’s SzenePenthesileaEinTraum (“ScenePenthesileaADream”, 1999–2000), and he invited the composer to contribute musically to the Horváth production. Ofenbauer decided on a sound installation that would create a subtle sense of unease throughout the evening within the concert house (an associative link to the “room”?) – specifically preceding the performance, during the intermission, after its ending. To achieve this, he wrote a densely woven, but very quiet texture for string quartet, which radically did without pauses or perceptible single notes, but instead, using extremely stretched, often noisily coloured glissandi and tremoli in all voices, returned to itself after 48 minutes, thus representing a kind of time loop, an irreconcilable infinity.

The additional instruments used were justified by the play itself: piano, zither, harp guitar and two violins. The theatre audience was able to palpably experience the merciless, icy climate that Ofenbauer achieved: apt in many respects, his music did not exactly help Graf’s production to win popularity ratings, but it did make a decisive contribution to the honesty of this Horváth interpretation. All this may suggest exact compositional calculation – and without question, it was carefully chosen in this way but the work on the incidental music was remarkably relaxed: he was not only proud of the final effect but also had great fun in, say, getting on with writing and observing how the sounds unfolded, Ofenbauer recalls. This experience made him calmer about composing, which had meant a large, helpful step in his personal development.

Transformation and independence /
… on autonomy in the concert hall

The obvious idea was to adapt this “Musique d’ameublement” for the concert hall and direct communication with the audience. Initially, it became evident that the piano part of the theatre music could be used as a standalone piece: it became Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit (1999) for piano solo – and could accordingly also be classified as part of the BruchStück series. The notation is conventional and exact, admittedly with many bar changes and ever shorter, repeated bar groups.

Morton Feldman comes to mind, but the feeling diverges: through a different structuring of the repetitions, a different musical gesture in general. The sounds are isolated, delicate, seemingly improvised, unintentional: very quiet throughout, self-effacing, unpretentious. Many rests (the piece even begins with one) and the permanently held pedal create space for extensive reverberation, in both acoustic and figurative senses of perception. And due to a relatively broad spectrum from which the pianist can choose his tempo (quarter = approx. 56-72), significant fluctuations in duration are possible from performance to performance.

As well, the composer was simultaneously held captive by the string quartet’s time cycle. But it would not be Ofenbauer if the music did not transform itself: by abandoning its original function and freeing itself from its former context, developing its momentum, in short: also changing compositionally.

For Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit, Concert version for string quartet and piano (2000), he subjected the piano part as well as those of the quartet to further revision. The ideas remained the same, but Ofenbauer intervened several times in the concrete progression of the piece, especially with accelerations (not perceived as such) in the string continuum towards the end of the 48 minutes, which are written down in space-time notation; and that which previously had to return into itself now misses its mark of origin: the circle no longer closes.

The piano also guarantees this kind of breakup of a supposedly established event, in that it begins at the same time as the string quartet, but, due to its independent tempo structure, penetrates its notated part to varying degrees from performance to performance, before, despite this, falling silent, together with the quartet, after exactly 48 minutes. Different tuning pitches are an important factor: 440 Hz is required for the strings, 445 Hz for the piano. This ensures that the piano’s droplets of sound are not absorbed by the string timbre, even in places where empty strings, chosen for technical reasons, may briefly somewhat dominate.

And suddenly a bridge appears to arch back to the incomplete Untergang des Egoisten Johann Fatzer (“Downfall of the Egoist Johann Fatzer”); to that fragment which, significantly, was written at the same time as Horváth’s Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald. In Heiner Müller’s stage version, Brecht says: “Der Zweck, wofür eine Arbeit gemacht wird, ist nicht mit jenem Zweck / Identisch, zu dem sie verwertet wird / Die Erkenntnis kann an einem anderen Ort gebraucht / Werden, als wo sie gefunden wurde.” (“The purpose for which a work is made is not identical with the purpose / for which it is used / The knowledge can be used in a different place / than where it was found.”) This applies to Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit, which leaves its origin behind, transforming itself: and which, in the form for piano solo as well as for string quartet and piano, interacts within and with itself – back to back, but hand in hand.

Walter Weidringer
Translation: Liz Hirst