THE STORY OF THE WOLF TONE
The Story of the Wolf Tone is a project based on the musical phenomenon known as the “wolf”, an acoustic parasite resulting from sound interferences emitted by certain string instruments. The designation itself refers to the “wolf fifth”, an interval whose mathematical ratio was cut off in order to fit in the “circle of fifths”, a representation of the Pythagorean tuning on which all Western music is based. Considered very dissonant and unpleasant to listen to, the wolf fifth has been either banned or systematically avoided in musical practice until today.
Augustin Maurs uses this phenomenon to explore our relationship to musical systems, and how the figure of the wolf has been used to embody the forbidden, the unfit or the noise. The project first takes the form of a human voice picking up on a melodic break in a resigned “hoo hoo” broadcasted by horn loudspeakers in the field facing the former Chandoline hydroelectric power station. Inside, a room is dedicated to the “Friends of the Wolf Fifth” (les amis de la quinte du loup), an association created on the occasion of the project. There, another sound piece responds to the first, “Dé-chiffrage in Wolf Fifths” for any string instrument. The room is set-up with documents and musical or lupine sources corresponding to the aims of this associative space, such as: “to promote wolf-noises, spiral-cycles and variable diapasons”.
C, K and Q motifs from THE PERPETUAL CANON
Augustin Maurs
With Elisa Storeli
THE PERPETUAL CANON is an inquiry into the notion of canon initiated by Augustin Maurs in Berlin studios and presented for the first time at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin in 2021. In the course of different collaborations and manifestations, the project looks into the historical developments of the term and explores its musical and non musical resonances until today. The outcome unfolds as an ongoing suite of pieces and practices, a quest for other kinds of musical response-ability. https://kanonqanuncanon.hotglue.me/
Motifs from NOTHING MORE
Augustin Maurs
Annerose Hummel, voice
The project Nothing More explores the voice as a resource of expression and transformation, from phonation and speech to singing and political vocalness. The title echoes the book of Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, in which the philosopher argues that if the voice does not contribute to making sense, it is nevertheless an “excess of meaning”, and “the very texture of the social”.
Nothing More was commissioned by Bergen Assembly 2022.
It consists of a mixed media installation presented at the Gyldenpris Kunsthall in Bergen and a piece for choir and organ premiered at the Bergen Cathedral as part of the opening days of Bergen Assembly 2022.
THE MUSIC CHAMBER
Saâdane Afif, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré , Natalie Czech, Jeremy Deller, Latifa Echakhch , Jenny Holzer , Richard Kongrosian, Natalie Rebholz , Hannah Weinberger, Denis Savary , Elisa Storelli and THE TUNING CEREMONY
In collaboration with:
Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Genève
Invited institutions and projects:
Biennale Son Valais , Ensemble Contrechamps, Joyfully Waiting, ECAL Bachelor in Visual Arts
Curated by Augustin Maurs together with Catherine Othenin-Girard
The Music Chamber is a space dedicated to sound and music launched as a new section of the Geneva art fair.For this edition, the Music Chamber shows the work of two invited artists, Saâdane Afif and Elisa Storelli, together with artists from the MAMCO collection, and in addition, a selection of artists brought by two invited projects: the Biennale Son Valais and Joyfully Waiting.
Motifs from NOTING MORE
Augustin Maurs
Together with Michaela Melián
Curated by Annika Larsson
Augustin Maurs presents his work NOTHING MORE in the frame work of the symposium “Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image”, the final event of a three-year artistic research project led by Annika Larsson and realized in collaboration with HFBK Hamburg and the Royal Institute of Art Stockholm.
with contributions by Pauline Curnier Jardin (screening & discussion), Samuel R. Delany (online reading & discussion), Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman (screening & online discussion), Liv Fontaine (performance), Satch Hoyt (sonic lecture), Karrabing Film Collective (screening), Elizabeth A. Povinelli (online talk & discussion), Anca Parvulescu (online talk & discussion), Raqs Media Collective (screening & online discussion), Steve Reinke & James Richards (screening & discussion), ruangrupa (screening & discussion), Ming Wong (screening), as well as with students from HFBK Hamburg and RIA Stockholm (screenings, performances, mixed media works).
NOTHING MORE
Augustin Maurs
In collaboration with Roar Sletteland
The project Nothing More explores the voice as a resource of expression and transformation, from phonation and speech to singing and political vocalness. The title echoes the book of Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, in which the philosopher argues that if the voice does not contribute to making sense, it is nevertheless an “excess of meaning”, and “the very texture of the social”.
Nothing More was commissioned by Bergen Assembly 2022.
It consists of a mixed media installation presented at the Gyldenpris Kunsthall in Bergen and a piece for choir and organ premiered at the Bergen Cathedral as part of the opening days of Bergen Assembly 2022.
More info here
NOTHING MORE
Augustin Maurs
In collaboration with Volve Vokal choir and Sigurd Øgaard (organ)
The project Nothing More explores the voice as a resource of expression and transformation, from phonation and speech to singing and political vocalness. The title echoes the book of Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, in which the philosopher argues that if the voice does not contribute to making sense, it is nevertheless an “excess of meaning”, and “the very texture of the social”.
Nothing More was commissioned by Bergen Assembly 2022.
It consists of a mixed media installation presented at the Gyldenpris Kunsthall in Bergen and a piece for choir and organ premiered at the Bergen Cathedral as part of the opening days of Bergen Assembly 2022.
More info here
Incantation on “DIE WELT, DIE WELT, DIE WELT”
Augustin Maurs
In the framework of the launch of the fourth issue of Side Magazine “The Fortune Teller”.
Augustin Maurs’s musical intervention “Die Welt die Welt die Welt die Welt” is part of an ongoing project that calls on the tarantella, a traditional dancing mania from Southern Italy, originally embedded in a therapeutic ritual. Starting in 2017, the piece resounds in different forms and places, taking over the typical triple time rhythm, the heightened repetitions and the shrill vocalisations of the tarantella, always rearranged for another, uncertain now.
Two Weeks at the Artica Residency Programme
Coal, ice, water and wind: Svalbard is a place so terrestrial that it feels like another planet. Longyearbyen, its main inhabited area and the “world’s northernmost settlement”, counts a population of 2000 humans, reportedly surrounded by about 3000 polar bears, and probably at least twice as many roaring snow scooters. Set in rows of wooden housing, it is an unusual social mix bringing together last features of a mining culture, an active scientific community, and the influences of the raising tourist industry. Conversations easily slide into the essential life basics in Svalbard; weather, mechanics, routes to take for this or that outing and so on. Here nature still dictates its laws, although not always along the expected course: a few days after my arrival, we were surprised by an unseasonable heat wave with temperatures above 0 degrees Celsius, and the (here quite disturbing) sound of nocturnal rain. Within 24 hours, the icy valley turned into a lagoon, the snow tracks into impassable muddy streams (there are hardly any roads in Svalbard), with high risks of avalanches forbidding us to go anywhere.
Full report here
THE MUSIC CHAMBER
Dirk Bell and Isabel Lewis (School of Swans), Tony Conrad, No Salad Records / Stéphane Kropf, Sunna Margrét, Gina Proenza, Karin Sander, Sarah Schönfeld, Stefan Tcherepnin
Curated by Augustin Maurs, with Catherine Othenin-Girard
The Music Chamber is a space dedicated to sound and music launched as a new section of the Geneva art fair. In this first edition, noise music will prevail throughout an arrangement of different settings whose status is often ambivalent, between sound installation, performance or silent object relating to sound. The pieces cohabit and sometimes interact in an environment where artistic gestures are prolonged by sound and vice versa.
The show will be extended by a concert at the Grand Théâtre de Genève with the Eklekto percussion Ensemble and No Salad Records.
MUSIQUES POUR TUYAUTERIE – for bird bone flutes and voice
Susanne Fröhlich, bird bone flutes
Claudia van Hasselt, voice
Music by Augustin Maurs
The artist Saâdane Afif commissioned Augustin Maurs to compose ten pieces for flute and voice in relation to his artwork The Fountain Archives, a reference to Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. Ten flutes were custom made from the bones of different bird species according to the techniques used to make the 35,000 years old flutes found in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany. Those items are considered to be the oldest musical instruments yet discovered. Each of the recreated flute has a specific shape and different non tempered scales from 1 to 13 pitches.
KANŌN, QANÛN, CANON, (…) – Music for qãnūn, monochord, sanza, trombone, cello, microtonal tuba, voices and electronic
M.O. Abbott, Bassem Alkhouri, Robin Hayward, Satch Hoyt, E.I. the Blob / Annika Larsson, Yutaka Makino
Initiated and assembled by Augustin Maurs
In ancient Greece the kanṓn, (Greek for “measuring rod” ,“rule”, “monochord”) was a single string musical tool, that served the purposes of measuring pitches and scales arithmetically. For many centuries the device straddled the gap between notes and numbers, intervals and ratios, linking together music, law, mathematics and astronomy. The kanṓn, and its Middle Eastern relative the qānūn, have been related to the elaboration of numerous groundbreaking but also occult theories. The tone measuring instrument was used and enhanced by Pythagoras, Al-Farabi or Kepler among many others, until the early days of modern Europe where the canon was gradually established as a cultural rule giver – and as a musical contra-punctual technique. How could a wooden tuning tool mutate into the cultural regulator of modern Western history?
MUSIQUE SUR L’AIR DU TEMPS
Augustin Maurs
Some musical comments on the voice as resource(s).
SCHIZOPHRENIA – The Score
Augustin Maurs
The starting point for this score (actually a series of scores) was a found document, the “Transcription of the Phonogram of a Schizophrenic”, a music sheet transcribing the recorded chanting of an anonymous psychiatric patient in Germany in 1899. The piece brings the document through different and delirious states of notation, performance and capture – from the lost ‘phonographic mise-en-scène’ undertaken by the patient to its inscription on the white walls of the gallery, which has become virtual. The transcription is no longer that of an isolated, anonymous patient, but of schizophrenia herself; the world, me.
DIE WELT DIE WELT DIE WELT DIE WELT – for voice
and tambourine (P O S T P O N E D)
Augustin Maurs
Die Welt die Welt die Welt die Welt (the world …) calls on the tarantella, a traditional dancing mania from South-Italy originally embedded in a therapeutic ritual meant to heal the envenomation of the bite of a spider, the tarantula. Suffering from restlessness or apathy, the (mostly female) victims of the bite would fall in a frenzied dancing trance provoked by the throbbing music of the tarantella, played by violins, guitars and tambourines. The ritual could last several hours or even days before the participants were brought back to normal life. Augustin Maurs takes over the typical triple time rhythm, the heightened repetitions and the shrill vocalisations of the tarantella to rearrange them for another uncertain now.
Robin Hayward, Satch Hoyt, Hilary Jeffery, Annika Larsson / E.I. the Blob, Yutaka Makino
Initiated and assembled by Augustin Maurs
A collective exploration of the propagation, alteration and the performing of musical rules in different historical or contemporary contexts KANÔN, QĀNŪN, CANON is an ongoing project, a growing body of different but related and combinable practices, experiments and pieces, a constantly unfolding canon that explores our dealings with musical norms and forms of imitation.
The project brings together microtonal explorations with ancestral, invented or revisited instruments, a sound sensitive “digital organism”, voices and acoustic hallucinations around a shared idea of antiphonic playing; a quest for outer-canonic call and response.
Funded by Initiative Neue Musik Berlin, Musikfonds / Neustart Kultur
BEING OUT OF TUNE – Favourite songs of dictators and despots
Augustin Maurs
with Quentin Tolimieri, piano
Being Out of Tune is a parodic recital based on songs that have been used, abused, and co-opted by ruling powers or performed by political leaders. Set in a cabaret show where the act of singing has been problematized, the piece deals with interconnections between popular, populist, and totalitarian forces.
ENCORES – Music on recurrence, redundancy and surplus (part 2)
Saâdane Afif, Sam Durant, Ecart / Émilie Parendeau, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Pierre Huyghe, Kristin Oppenheim, Raymond Pettibon/Oliver Augst, Anri Sala
Curated by Augustin Maurs
This concert continues and extends a project presented at the Teatro Goldoni initiated by artgeneva and curated by Augustin Maurs during the Venice Biennale 2019. The program draws on the notion of “encore”; a repeated or additional performance called by the audience at the end of a concert. Often reflecting the momentary state of mind of musicians, “encores” can result in uniquely intimate musical renditions, or into moments of excessive extravaganza or pretense – sometimes exceeding the given frame of the entire event. Increasingly associated with provocative or less serious performances, encores have sometimes been officially banned from certain theaters, for potentially leading to public disorder. For the invited artists, the notion of encore serves as a social-ritualistic pattern and as an artistic scheme to explore different kinds of reiterations, mutations or changes. Music is perceived as convertible energy, often referring to already existing works or to somewhat noisy political events.
BEING OUT OF TUNE – Favourite songs of dictators and despots
Augustin Maurs
With Igor Feketija (keyboards), Leon Firšt (guitar/percussion), Peter Firšt (trumpet)
Being Out of Tune is a parodic recital based on songs that have been used, abused, and co-opted by ruling powers or performed by political leaders. Set in a cabaret show where the act of singing has been problematized, the piece deals with interconnections between popular, populist, and totalitarian forces.
MUSIC FOR FUTURE IMAGES
Angela Bulloch, Annika Larsson / Satch Hoyt, Yutaka Makino, Karin Sander
With the Berlin Bass Ensemble
Curated by Augustin Maurs
Music For Future Images is an assemblage of pieces presented in the framework of the exhibition “Wo kommen wir hin” in the Berlin Academy of Arts. In times that can be described as politically disastrous, the artists working on “Wo kommen wir hin” take the necessary freedom to examine the aesthetic user interfaces of society and to develop their own. The starting point is the forms of art to which no particular use or function can be assigned at first:
An obstinate canon, musicians and a listening image singing the world after the end of the world, sound as behavioural mirror, the melodies of taking pictures, and an electric bass ensemble playing sculptures that have not yet been produced.
ENCORES – music on recurrence, redundancy and surplus
Saâdane Afif, Hsia-Fei Chang, Pierre Huyghe, Yutaka Makino, Jonathan Monk, Annika Larsson / Satch Hoyt, Anri Sala
Curated by Augustin Maurs
ENCORES – music on recurrence, redundancy and surplus draws on the notion of “encore”; a repeated or additional performance called by the audience at the end of a concert. Often reflecting the momentary state of mind of musicians, encores can result in uniquely intimate musical renditions, or into moments of excessive extravaganza or pretense – sometimes even exceeding the given frame of the entire event. Increasingly associated with less serious performances, encores have sometimes been officially banned from certain theaters, for potentially leading to public disorder. For the invited artists, the notion of encore serves as a social-ritualistic pattern and as an artistic scheme to explore different kinds of reiterations, mutations or changes. Music is perceived as convertible energy, often referring to already existing works or to somewhat noisy political events.
Presented by artgeneva.
A FAILED PERFORMANCE
Hsia-Fei Chang
Curated by Augustin Maurs
Weapons and music instruments have a long common history – from the bow and arrow (allegedly the first string musical instrument) to the « Ghost Army » used by the US Military as sonic lure during World War 2. Giant propaganda loudspeaker walls as they have been erected between Taiwan and China or between South and North Korea are a further incursion of sound within military or political conflicts. Such a “broadcast wall”, a structure holding 28 horn loudspeakers (conceived by Augustin Maurs), is serving as the starting point of the project presented for artgenève/musique 2019.
In the installation, the broadcast wall is deprived of its usual propaganda function. Instead, it is used to narrate an infamous undertaking: the attempt of a political assassination, which, in the end, fails. Chang’s work diagnoses this manifold failure, opening up a semantic sphere where the notions of voice, weapon and performance play a hide and seek game, and eventually blur.
MUSIC FOR BIRD BONE FLUTES AND VOICE
Susanne Fröhlich, bird bone flutes
Claudia van Hasselt, voice
Music by Augustin Maurs commissioned by Saâdane Afif
The artist Saâdane Afif commissioned Augustin Maurs to compose ten pieces for flute and voice in relation to his artwork The Fountain Archives, a reference to Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. Ten flutes were custom made from the bones of different bird species according to the techniques used to make the 35,000 years old flutes found in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany. Those items are considered to be the oldest musical instruments yet discovered. Each of the recreated flute has a specific shape and different non tempered scales from 1 to 13 pitches.
I HAVE NO WORDS – For propaganda loudspeakers and voices
Augustin Maurs
Conceived for the monumental Beishan Broadcasting Wall in Taiwan, a former propaganda “loudspeaker wall”. The piece is based on a selection of quotes on silence and muteness – in the vein of John Cage’s notorious statement “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”. It deals with the sonic affects of propaganda and the often related traumas through the question of “what cannot be said”. Non-professional singers sing the quotes in their native language, one by one and through simple and short a cappella melodies.
I HAVE NO WORDS (a reading)
Augustin Maurs
Augustin Maurs reads from his score I HAVE NO WORDS Conceived for the monumental Beishan Broadcasting Wall in Taiwan. His voice is amplified by a series of 40 horn loudspeakers which form his installation presented at the Busan Biennale 2018. The piece is based on a selection of quotes on silence and muteness – in the vein of John Cage’s notorious statement “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”. It deals with the sonic affects of propaganda and the often related traumas through the question of “what cannot be said”. Non-professional singers sing the quotes in their native language, one by one and through simple and short a cappella melodies.
FOR PROPAGANDA LOUDSPEAKERS AND VOICES
Augustin Maurs
With the Kimnen County Choir
Conceived for the monumental Beishan Broadcasting Wall in Taiwan, a former propaganda “loudspeaker wall”. The piece is based on a selection of quotes on silence and muteness – in the vein of John Cage’s notorious statement “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”. It deals with the sonic affects of propaganda and the often related traumas through the question of “what cannot be said”. Non-professional singers sing the quotes in their native language, one by one and through simple and short a cappella melodies.
SONIC TERRITORRIES
Hsia-Fei Chang, Wang Fu-Jui, Augustin Maurs, Ada Kai-Ting Yang, Kinmen County Choir
While standing on a frontier, the monumental Beishan broadcast wall also abolishes it. In August 2018, a group of Taiwanese and international artists re-activate and re-invent the Beishan broadcast wall in the course of an artist-run research residency. During this investigation, the loudspeaker construction becomes a twofold instrument where outer and inner voices cross, and where artist voices merge with the voices of local participants.
Departing from the site of the Beishan broadcast wall, the project plays with the idea of territory as geographic, but also as sonic and mental entity. The loudspeaker wall becomes a poly-semantic instrument, and the unifying protagonist of an unmappable artistic topography.
KKL Hu-Lien Culture & Arts Foundation
Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government
Bureau Français de Taipei
Kinmen County Government Tourism Office
TARANTELLA
Augustin Maurs
A composition based on musical instructions, notations and scripts arranged around the Sophien-Gibs-Höfe and the Aperto Raum in Berlin. The piece refers to the tarantella, a traditional dancing mania from south Italy. Recomposed for an undetermined rendition and for a uncertain “now”, it brings a series of superlatives states, moves and signs into a frenzied, yet unpredictable dance.
LE PETIT LIVRE-MEURTRE
Augustin Maurs
With ensemble EVO
Le petit livre-meurtre (The Little Murder-Book) is a 3,8 x 2,4 cm book consisting in the word “murder” translated in over 200 languages. The musical rendition of the book occurs on specific occasions in the framework of musical collaborations. The first rendition was developed together with the Rome based vocal ensemble EVO.
THE DILIJAN TRANSCRIPTIONS – for inside piano, trombone and cello
(from The Love Transcriptions)
Augustin Maurs
With Tisha Mukarji and Hilary Jeffery
The Love Transcription (the transcriptions of love or the love to transcribe) is an open collection of sonic traces – found, heard or remembered sounds or musical motifs, hastily written down in the wish to be kept, or in the attempt to be forgotten. The incompleteness and futility of the transcriptions makes their musical rendition uncertain. Sounds re-emerge, modified and remote from any kind of fidelity.
The Dilijan Transcription resulted from a two weeks stay in the Armenian mountains, during the Dilijan Arts Observatory.
Selected chapter:
– THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE SEEN, TRANSCRIBED,
TRANSPOSED (what we have escaped from)
THE LOVE TRANSCRIPTIONS (scores from)
Augustin Maurs
The Love Transcription (the transcriptions of love or the love to transcribe) is an open collection of sonic traces – found, heard or remembered sounds or musical motifs, hastily written down in the wish to be kept, or in the attempt to be forgotten. The incompleteness and futility of the transcriptions makes their musical rendition uncertain. Sounds re-emerge, modified and remote from any kind of fidelity.
The exhibition shows parts of the transcriptions resulting from a two weeks stay in the Armenian mountains, during the Dilijan Arts Observatory.
Part of the exhibition “Hello World”, Curated by Clementine Deliss
MYTH MUSIC AND ELECTRICITY
Monica Bonvicini, Angela Bulloch, Nina Canell & Robin Watkins, Annika Larsson, Susan Philipsz, PPKK (Schönfeld & Scoufaras), Karin Sander, Louis-Philippe Scoufaras
Curated by Augustin Maurs
Taking place in the historic Herkulessaal in Munich, this evening takes its broad theme from the myths surrounding the location’s name-giver. Specifically, a lesser-known story within the mythology of Hercules recounts how, as a child, he violently killed his music master, Linus of Thrace, after being reprimanded for his lack of musicality. Music, Myth and Electricity plays with the adventurous and unpredictable construction of myths within our relation to sound and electric streams. The Herkulessaal, usually a stage for classical music ensembles, becomes the host of a series of new works mainly conceived for electric and amplified instruments – among them a bass guitar ensemble (Angela Bulloch), a set of 12 turntables (PPKK), signals from the solar wind, aurora borealis and other magnetic storms (Nina Canell & Robin Watkins) and a pipe organ (Annika Larsson).
VICE DE FORME (music for)
Music by Augustin Maurs
With Anna Clementi, voice and Clemens Hund-Göschel, piano
Commissioned by Saâdne Afif in the framework of the exhibition ‘
“Vice de forme”.
DIE BLAUE STUNDE
Angela Bulloch
Curated by Augustin Maurs
Large Blue Music Listening Station, 2017
The Large Blue Music Listening Station (2017) belongs to a series of listening stations that Angela Bulloch began in 2012. They are equipped with a vinyl record turntable which sits on a base that is fastened to the wall, a sound system, and a brightly colored LP released by the artist’s record label ABCDLP. Heavy felt curtains hang from a curvilinear metal railing, creating a semi-private enclosure while also functioning as acoustic insulation. The felt keeps the sound from escaping, at the same time intensifying the music playing inside.
The show is accompanied by a record release performance by HSBC (Heatsick & Bass Clef) in the Villa Sarasin, Geneva
AN IDEA OF STOLEN TIME
Saâdane Afif, Sarah Darwin, Baude Cordier, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Annika Larsson, Jonathan Monk, Tisha Mukarji
Curated by Augustin Maurs
If music is traditionally organised through quantifiable time parameters, it is also the evidence of the unquantifiable essence of time. That is what is evoked by the notion of “tempo rubato”, Italian for “stolen time”. The rhythmic freedom adopted by the interpreter, the transitory and unmeasurable features of the musical act. The “tempo rubato” is a musical union between time and space, singular and irreproducible. It bears the the technique and the raison d’être of a “now” which is a theft doubled by a “giving up”.
With the support of the Bureau des Arts Plastiques, Berlin
THE LOVE TRANSCRIPTIONS (from) – for qanun ensemble and voices
Augustin Maurs
With Nork Zakarian and the Dilijan Qanun Ensemble
In the framework of the Dilijan Arts Observatory curated by Clementine Deliss.
The transcriptions of love or the love to transcribe. A collection of found scores, hastily written sounds heard while being on the road, but also memorised chords and melodies written down in the attempt to be forgotten. The incompleteness and futility of the transcriptions makes their musical realisation uncertain, their originality remote.
Selected chapter:
– THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE SEEN, TRANSCRIBED, TRANSPOSED,
(what we have escaped from)
WATER MUSIC (a drowning)
Augustin Maurs
Composition For brass ensemble after Handel, together with the Berlin Brass Ensemble. Curated by Jörg Heiser.
The Daily Courant, 19. Juli 1717:
“On Wednesday Evening, at about 8, the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Barge, wherein were Dutchess of Bolton, The Dutchess of New Castle, the Countess of Godolphin, Madam Kilmaseck, and the Earl of Orkney. And went up the River towards Chelsea. Many other of Barges with Person of Quietly attended, and so the great Number of Boats, that the whole River in a manner was couver’d; a City Company’s Barge was employ’d for the Musick, wherein were 50 Instruments of all sorts, Who play’d all the way from Lambeth (while the Barges drove with the Tide without Rowing, as far as Chelsea) the finest Symphonies , compos’d express for this Occasion, by Mr Hendel: which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaind over three times in going and returning. At Eleven his Majesty came again into Barge, and return’d the same Way, the Musick continuing to play till he landed.”
DAS ENDE DER WELT
Music by Augustin Maurs
With The Last Ensemble
Ricardo Frenzel Baudisch (tenor), Katharina Schrade (soprano), Sarah van der Kemp (soprano), Yuka Yanagihara (soprano), and Ni Fan (percussion).
Commissioned by Saâdane Afif on the occasion of his exhibition “Das Ende der Welt” at the Berlin Natural History Museum.
The Last Ensemble: Martin Åkesson, Audrey Andrieu, Katharina Beckmann, Nina Berclaz, Cornelius von Bernstorff, Oliver Coleman, Sarah Darwin, Helga Dittmann-Pätsch, Guillaume Doerflinger, Philothée Gaymard, Cornelia Hiller, Hervé Humbert, Sam Kennedy, Cosima zu Knyphausen, Katharina Kritzler, Rüdiger Mangel, Sigrun Meyer, Alberto Piu, Antonio Piu, Cathia Ruf, Marilena Stano, and Renate Wolf.
THE LOVE TRANSCRIPTIONS (from)
Augustin Maurs
The Love Transcription (the transcriptions of love or the love to transcribe) is an open collection of sonic traces – found, heard or remembered sounds or musical motifs, hastily written down in the wish to be kept, or in the attempt to be forgotten. The incompleteness and futility of the transcriptions makes their musical interpretation or rendition uncertain, remote from any notion of fidelity.
Selected chapters:
– Although the positions of the moving bodies…
– DREAM
– Yes
– How does your work look like in a little box?
– Blue
– (Boredom) IT’S WHAT YOU DO TO ME!
– Nothing’s gonna change
– Lord, I’ll never ask for more
– Aouh cha cha cha
– Zero time, zero symbolic value, zero tangerine
– (Scelsi) la bemolle
– Blue (more)
– Why f#?
A LONGER SORROW WHERE THE MOON NOTES EQUAL THE BEACH BRIDGES
Anri Sala
Curated by Augustin Maurs
Anri Sala’s piece consists in a juxtaposition of two of his previous works, Long Sorrow (2005) and Where the Moon Notes Equal the Beach Bridges (2012). The starting point of the project is the Film Long Sorrow, in which the free jazz saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc intones a long improvisation, while suspended at the window of a suburban building near Berlin. In 2011, Sala staged the performance 3-2-1 in which the saxophonist André Vida had musically “responded” to Moondoc in the course of a 400 live concerts marathon at the London Serpentine Gallery, while the film was projected. Sala’s new project for artgenève starts with the editing of the material recorded in the Serpentine Gallery, creating a sort of musical multiplication. This new soundtrack is appended to the film projection, while André Vida is again extending the musical texture, yet responding to himself. The trombone player Hilary Jeffery will join him in a musical dialog referring to Sala’s piece Where the Moon Notes Equal the Beach Bridges. Premiered by Vida and Jeffery in Arles’ Amphitheatre in 2012, the piece is based on the musical principle of the “bridge”, usually a contrasting and transitory section. The music unfolds to a multidimensional composition gravitating around the ongoing interpretations of Long Sorrow in an incisive orchestration of fixity and openness.
KANON
Augustin Maurs
With Katarina Schrade, soprano
Canon for asynchronous voices.
TON IN TON
Oswald Egger and Augustin Maurs
ISCRIZIONI
Augustin Maurs
Curated by Egija Inzule
ISCRIZIONI (Inscriptions) is a series of scores presented in the frame work of Different Walls – A tribute to N.O.F.4 (Oreste Fernando Nannetti) a study programme and an artistic project on the human and creative experience of Oreste Fernando Nannetti, proposed by the Istituto Svizzero di Roma in collaboration with the artist Cesare Pietroiusti, starting from the research carried out by the art historian Lucienne Peiry and collected in the publication Nannetti, Infolio/Collection de l’Art Brut, Gollion/Lausanne, 2011.
THREE TOASTS TO STOLEN TIME
Augustin Maurs
Curated by Anna Cestelli Guidi.
If music is traditionally organized through quantifiable time parameters, it is also the evidence of the unquantifiable essence of time. Appearing in the 19th century, the notion of “tempo rubato”, Italian for “stolen time”, precisely evokes the rhythmic freedom taken by the interpreter, the transitory and unmeasurable essence of the musical act. As a musical union between time and space, the “rubato” is inherently singular and irreproducible. It opposes synchronization, which is precisely what enables music to be reproduced.
The exploring of this idea of “rubato” transforms the exhibition rooms in a lively space, a space of encounters and experimentations in continuous movement trough the combination of an electronic soundtrack and live playing. An assemblage of scores is at the disposal of the musicians and the visitors. This notational inquiry consisting of invented signs, stains and quotes, almost casual poetical events, though denies the actual use of music notation, but rather brings about a reflexion about “given” and stolen time, about music and playing.
In cooperation with RAM – radioartemobile.
CADENCE – Music for plates
Augustin Maurs
Cadence – “flow of rhythm in verse or music”, from old Italian cadenza „conclusion of a movement in music“, from Latin „to fall“, sometimes used literally for “ an act of falling”.
ÑEWPRESSIONISM (Music for)
Augustin Maurs
With Domenico Billari (guitar) and Benedetta Zucconi (viola)
Curated by Miltos Manetas
We live in a time of Metascreens. The screen (not the computers) and digital networks have become another layer of nature. The screen is an object that projects, transmits, translates, but at the same time reconciles, isolates and protects.The screen prevents the view of the totality, it shows only a part, one piece at a time and is not able to give us the whole “impression”, the vision of the “totality”. With Priscilla Tea, Angelo Plessas, Mario Rossi, Jon Rafman, Mike Calvert, Amalia Ulman.
FOUND MELODIES AND STAINS
Augustin Maurs
With the Ensemble Matka
The stain is usually associated with the undesirable. It is the stigmata of the flaw. But in spite of its arbitrarily existence, it can sometimes be indistinguishable from the sign – especially in the musical notation where the note is represented with a dot.
Augustin Maurs’s transdisciplinary work plays on these boundaries between definite meaning and randomness. The process is both graphic and sonic. Partly familiar, partly anonymous, his “found melodies” carry the imperfection of memory, the deformation and the indifference of time.
Scattered in different places of the Villa Sarasin, the musicians play in individual time frames, guided by external phenomenons, such as moving objects, or the sudden presence of a person in a room. Stain and Sign interact. The idea of “playing together” is altered.
SEPT NOTES SUR LE TRAVAIL DE PETER ROEHR
Augustin Maurs
With Katharina Schrade
composition for voice and Piano after Peter Roehr.
Commissioned by Saâdane Afif.
VIRTUOSITY – On skill and disruption, strength and nonchalance, morale and cheating
Saâdane Afif, Bethan Huws, Christoph Keller, Annika Larsson, Klara Lidén, Olaf Nicolai, Elliot Sharp, Tracey Rose, Tino Sehgal
Curated by Augustin Maurs
With the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin and Truike van der Poel, voice and the Chor der Kulturen der Welt.
Virtuosity, a signifier for outstanding artistic mastery, simultaneously always implies transgression. Famously embodied by the “Devil’s Violinist” Niccolò Paganini’s ability to blend fear with delight, this ambiguous notion blurs the boundaries between opposing forces, and where required, between good and evil. The composer Augustin Maurs takes this ambivalence as an opportunity to invite visual artists to give a concert in the Kammersaal of the Berlin Philharmonie. Together with the ‘Kammerensemble Neue Musik’ and the singers from the ‘Chor der Kulturen der Welt’, eight Berlin-based international artists will create and perform various new musical compositions. They will take into consideration the special format of the concert, the musicians, singers and the architecture of the Philharmonie – the masterpiece of architect Hans Scharoun, one of the most prestigious concert halls in the world.
Presented by artgenva with the kind support of the Swedish Embassy in Berlin and the “Freunde Guter Musik e.V.
IN THE DARK – Bach practice Files
Augustin Maurs
In the Dark is a concert exhibition by Augustin Maurs that offers a unique approach to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. After years of examination, the Suites have been removed from the concert hall and placed in an unilluminated space, in which the cellist repeatedly plays them over a period of ten days. Through the extended timeframe and the elimination of any visual input, the listener and the playing musician are unified within the same visual and musical space.
Originally conceived as studies, Bach’s Cello Suites are dances written around 1720. Although unaccompanied, they are expansive polyphonic musical masterpieces, considered both the beginning and culmination of the cello repertoire. Uncertainty about the original creative intentions of the Suites invites perpetual debate and allows imaginative free reign for redefining the environment in which they are played. Bach Suites in the Dark removes the Suites from the concert hall and explores the malleability of the pieces and the notion of practice in which they are rooted.
MUSIC FOR HANGING APPLES
Augustin Maurs
Apples are hanging on invisible threads in a barn and oscillate in different speeds. Musicians are invited to play according to the different tempi, until the space is invaded by the guests of a dinner.
SPEAK MUSEUM
Augustin Maurs
With Joel Lorcerie, percussions, Antoine Virard flutes
Students of the University of Franche-Comte.
SPEAK MUSEUM is the result of a meeting between students from the University of Franche-Comté and works of art from the Montbéliard Museum during a workshop directed by Augustin Maurs.
Chapters:
Under ground – Kitchen debate on trade.
Themes chosen and animated by Fabio Furuli and Jérémie Paille.
1st floor – Contemporary art room: hidden duets and talking Paintings :”forms and contiguous places”. Classical Painting Room: talking paintings, mixed stories.
2nd floor – Archaeology, Iron, clay, objects, sounds, economy.
DIVERTIMENTO
Annika Larsson and Augustin Maurs
Music is commonly defined as “organization of sounds”, by opposition to noise – etymologically from nausea, referring to nuisance, disorder or idleness. In the context of this opposition, where noise and idleness are considered negative, the musical genre of the Divertimento appears to be somehow ambiguous.
Traditionally a light and entertaining composition, generally for a small ensemble, also described as Nachtmusik, a light, “after-dinner” and often outdoor music, the Divertimento used to accompany banquets and other social events.
The Divertimento in 4 movements for voices, objects, whistles and strings, is an attempt to draw on this ambiguity and invites performers and audience to a moment of distraction, amusement, entertainment and delight, but also to possibilities of rerouting, redirecting, and “changing the course of”. The piece combines a composed and staged rendition of idle talk and noise, offering a reflection on the reversibility of their connotations.
CONCERTO FOR AMBIDEXTROUS MUSICIANS
Augustin Maurs with Michael Wilhelmi
A sounding picture on dexterity, embarrassment and indifference. The two cellists alternately display musical skills and mortifying helplessness while the orchestra members are getting drunk.
THE STORY OF THE WOLF TONE – for cello and wolf
Augustin Maurs
With Ana Teixeira Pinto
The wolf tone is the acoustical parasite resulting from the interference of vibrations produced on a certain note on string instruments. This designation itself refers to the “wolf fifth”, a metaphor of the unpleasant rendition of an interval that has been artificially cut of to fit in the Pythagorean system of the “circle of fifth”, on which all western music is based. In reality, a series of Pythagorean fifths does not appear as a closed circle, but as an infinite spiral.
ALLEMANDE – Reiterations on empty Stage.
Augustin Maurs
The reiteration of J.S. Bach’s allemande from the 5th cello suite hidden from the stage, while the audience looks at notes made by the interpreter.
OHNE TITEL
Augustin Maurs
With Helga Wretman and Jacob Kovner.
Attempt of a dialog between Henry Purcell, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Chiharu Shiota and others.
WINTERREISEN – 24 unvollendete Lieder
Augustin Maurs
With Michael Wilhelmi (piano), Björn Lehmann (piano), Andre Bartezki (Electronics), Verena Harzer (Dramaturgy)
A commentary on Schubert’s “Winter Journey.
Ongoing series of concerts and workshops.
And Cornelius von Bernstorff, Dagobert, Julian Damovsky, Pinar Kaya, Raswan Mohamed, Geneviève Orjollet, Florian Pfeifer, Luca Plachy, Fatmagul Yaman, Olivier Grienenberger, Christian Marien, Aaron Synder, Lorent & Francois Ardouvin / chimère, Looniz, Samso, Sanni, Mizzion, Skaz, Louison Selmane, Afro Hesse, Billal, Sofiane, Tony, Sedo, Crime, Sanni, Mizzion, Skaz. (voices and texts)
With the kind support of Hauptstadtkulturfonds, INM (Initiative Neue Musik Berlin), Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk, Schloss Bröllin e.V. – international art research location, Outreach – Mobile Jugendarbeit Berlin, Collectif Fusion, Villiers le bel, Stiftung Genshagen (Berlin Brandenburgisches Institut für Deutsch-Französische Zusammenarbeit in Europa).
WINTERREISEN – 24 unvollendete Lieder
With Michael Wilhelmi (piano) Aaron Synder, Lorent & Francois Ardouvin (voices and texts)
Verena Harzer (Dramaturgy)
Directed by Augustin Maurs
A commentary on Schubert’s “Winter Journey. Ongoing series of concerts and workshops. And Cornelius von Bernstorff, Dagobert, Julian Damovsky, Pinar Kaya, Raswan Mohamed, Geneviève Orjollet, Florian Pfeifer, Luca Plachy, Fatmagul Yaman, Olivier Grienenberger, Christian Marien.
With the kind support of Hauptstadtkulturfonds, INM (Initiative Neue Musik Berlin), Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk, Schloss Bröllin e.V. – international art research location, Outreach – Mobile Jugendarbeit Berlin, Collectif Fusion, Villiers le bel, Stiftung Genshagen (Berlin Brandenburgisches Institut für Deutsch-Französische Zusammenarbeit in Europa).
SYMPHONY
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nam June Paik, Georges de Scudéry, Gustav Mahler, Annika Larsson
Proposed by Augustin Maurs
Symphony, from Greek συμφωνία (symphonia), “agreement or concord of sound”, “concert of vocal or instrumental music”, from σύμφωνος (symphōnos), “harmonious”, agreeing in sound.
With:
Jeremy Woodruff, Jeremy Junior, Erik Drescher, Miguel Perez, Elissa lee, Ayumi Paul, Dea Szuck, Laura Rayanen, Emer Kinsella, Benedikt v. Bernstorff, Kirsten Harms, Jodfat, Yair lantner, Sarah Rilling, Miguel Perez, Thomas Kaufmann, Julian Damowski, Sandra Vrampelmeyer (Orchestra) and Christian Petersen, piano
Aktsalon Berlin
CONCERTO FOR GONG ENSEMBLE, ORATIONS AND TABLE CEREMONY
With the ensemble“The Tenth Assault on Kazan” (Jason Dodge, Dieter Roelstraete, Monika Szewczyk, Annika Larsson, Andrew Noble, Jennifer Allen, Ana Texeira Pinto and Martha Rosler (players and speakers)
Composed by Augustin Maurs
A composed evening combining a musical performance with speeches throughout a supper ceremony. Augustin Maurs and the ensemble “THE TENTH ASSAULT ON KAZAN” conducted by Dieter Roelstraete & Annika Larsson perform 40 variations of the Catalan song “el cant dels ocells” (the song of the birds) for cello and gongs. Their music will include orations held by special guests during a supper conceived and prepared by Meggie Schneider. Master of ceremony Józefina Chętko will lead the visitors through the evening. The Concerto for Gong Ensemble, Orations and Table Ceremony recalls Pau Casals’s renowned appearance at the United Nations In 1971. At the age of 94, the world famous cellist gave a remarkable speech praising his homeland Catalonia, “the first nation in history which had brought out the idea of parliament”. He ended this ceremony by playing the Catalan song “el cant dels ocells” in his personal transcription for cello and ensemble, a gesture which raised the folk melody to a hymn of political independence.
KIEU
Composed by Augustin Maurs, in collaboration with
Yuka Yanagihara, voice, Michael Wilhelmi, piano and Alex Babel, percussion
Miniature opera based on the epic verse novel “The Tale of Kieu” by Nguyen Du (1765–1820). Departing from the character of “Kieu” – a young artist who is forced to sell herself to survive, the piece deals with the entanglements between dispossession and fiction. It travels through different composed and improvised musical archetypes staged and performed in almost complete darkness.
KIEU won the 2 price of the 100 Grad Festival, Berlin
MUSIC FOR DRUNK AUDIENCE AND ACOUSTICAL ACCIDENTS
For inside piano and cello
Augustin Maurs, with Michael Wilhelmi
Nearly audible melodic lines are played by the musicians while the audience is provided with strong liquor in a gallery space prepared with acoustical traps.