Instinkt (2008)
(for vocal ensemble)

In 2006, the singer Truike van der Poel gave me a CD with recordings of the choral singing of sled dogs made by Oswald Wiener. Fascinated, I listened to the whole CD and wondered why these sounds are so beautiful. Is it the harmony, is it the timbre? I painstakingly transcribed the sounds and set them for 6 voices. Also sounds of arctic polar foxes, loons, water fowl and whales were transcribed to the human voice. The singers get these original sounds with the notation and have the task to come as close as possible to the sounds with their individual organ. Instinkt was commissioned by Deutschlandfunk in 2008 for Schola Heidelberg in a gender context and is dedicated to Truike van der Poel.

 "The peculiar enjoyability of this music, which proves itself in repetitions, forces the conclusion that for the dogs, too, a more abstract aesthetic experience is in the foreground. In the background, however, always, a sadness that cannot be compensated aesthetically. This is not a complaint about the concrete conditions, the chains, the hunger – unmistakably the creation itself is accused..." (Oswald Wiener)