Verborgene Reime (2006)
(for choir and percussion)

Words constantly inspire the language of sounds. This one-sided relationship is fundamentally based on the simple fact that the imagination of composers of all times and stylistic periods was first and foremost ignited by already written models. With a few exceptions, where texts were only adapted to existing melodies and rhythms after the fact, the encounter takes place in a kind of one-way street, in which the language of words is the occasion for manifold injections of inspiration and thus constantly stimulates a wealth of tonal images. (The process reminds me of the fable with the alluring, dangling carrot in front of the donkey's mouth, which encourages him to keep going). At least the mighty spring of words does not seem to be drying up; the main artery and tributaries still carry enough water on the mills of language to continue to spur on the music of the present, and certainly that of the future.

What drove me to write this vocal work was the attempt to further develop the inherent and at the same time striking musicality of many poems through some self-imposed guidelines. By using the term text composition, however, I avoided giving the impression that I had “written poetry” in order to compose the linguistic template for this piece. Poems are probably closest to musical thinking due to their special rules for verse length, rhythms of emphasis and the strictness of their various structural forms; any musical setting can hardly escape this context.

In this piece, I have limited myself to a few poems with strong imagery and suggestive atmosphere from German, French, English, Italian and Spanish poetry, as well as two sections in Latin and Comanche. However: I only ever used the second half of the verses - sometimes even just the last word - as the basis for my work and continued them with similar-sounding words and concepts.
The result was a constant dialog with the almost exceptionally used skin instruments of both percussionists. Talking drums, the talking drums from Africa, play an outstanding role. They hint, underline, announce and thus emphasize the striking parallel between language and music. Ocean drums, Chinese rattle drum (T'ao ku), bougarabous (Senegal, Guinea), Chinese barrel drum (T'ang ku), boo-bams and surdo (Brazil) are also used.

Many text sequences were created associatively. Words that rhyme through the same ending, as if driven by a natural consonance, are not isolated, but are thematically connected.
Both terms, hidden (... concealing, camouflaging, concealing, concealing, blurring, obscuring ...) and rhyming (... unison, gutter rhyme, sliding rhyme, half-rhyme, fabulating refrain, female and male rhyme, bar rhyme, rhyme cell, ...). I have tried to take this into account both in the creation of the text and in some phases of the music. The notes then “rhyme” in “verse form”, often with a time delay, as a counterpart to the flowing structure of the word chains.

The brief glimpse into the strange world of the rhyme-officio, a peculiar mixture of antiphonies, recitation and responsories that fell victim to the Council of Trent's clear-cutting in the XVIth century, is also associative. The ban was based on the desire to standardize the liturgy of the Catholic Church through basic principles of a non-musical nature in order to draw sharp boundaries against Protestantism, which had recently emerged. What is exciting about the form of the Office from the X. What is exciting about the form of the X century Office is that all the material throughout the day was devoted to the life and suffering of a saint in rhyme. It may be that this medieval poetry is regarded as a typical example of earlier mannerism. But how related such techniques are to reflections on the construction of language in the XXth century. My excursion into the regulating power of the rhyme-officio is sung in an almost blurred (... hidden ...) polyphony, in contrast to the strictly monodic performance of Gregorian chant. If you like, not a sacred, but rather a secular understanding of the concept. A freethinking interpretation? May the Almighty forgive me in time.

M.K.
(Translation by Edition Peters)