Die Stücke der Windrose (1993)
(Norden)

Is it a coincidence that the Stücke der Windrose were completed with this composition? Even though there is no specific order for the performance of the eight cycle numbers, I was by no means indifferent to the sequence of cardinal points when writing. Sometimes the sonic imagination ignited spontaneously, and thoughts seemed to roll over. Some regions of this musical-geographical cycle were a welcome opportunity for me to trace the obvious and yet enigmatic correspondences that connect cultures and continents acoustically.

But in the northernmost north - and also in the southernmost south - comparisons are usually uncertain and lead to questionable ciphers. Here, where the naked rien-ne-va-plus prevails in every respect, it is not music that comes to mind first, but white infinity, perpetual wind and the almost total absence of human life.

As I already find the cold of a mild winter hard to bear, the idea of taking a hike along the Arctic Circle in my mind was a pleasurable challenge. Starting in Mongolian Siberia, at the end of my winter journey I would attend a ritual ceremony with the Inuit Eskimos in Canada's Hudson Bay. However, every time I had the firm intention of flying to the northernmost terminus in Canada, unforeseen rehearsal dates and conversations or miserable travel weather forced me to postpone the plan again.

However, the real reason for realizing my wish was a different one. More than forty years ago, as a participant in a seminar on the history of religion, I read a treatise on Siberian myths about the origin of the shamans, the symbolism of their costumes and the transcendental role of the omnipresent magic drum. Above all, I never forgot the function of music in magical healings. Unfortunately, after such a long time, I have forgotten both the name of the author and the title of the book.

Now I decided to go in a completely different direction, to wander into myself. Instead of attempting a truthful approach to the subject, I decided to translate my impressions at the time of reading the text into music in order to reconstruct the sounds and rhythms that I imagined at the time, even without knowing a note of the original music. The result was Norden, as if one were writing an acoustic review of a long-lost book, with only scraps of memory remaining as working material.

This music is not related to a physically experienced state on site or to ethnomusicological recordings, so it makes no claim to any kind of authenticity whatsoever. And yet: with the percussion, for example, the listener can recognize instruments and props that belong to the elementary items in those latitudes. Animal skins, stones, wind, fire, water, the crunching of snow, the breaking of ice, are either explicitly present here or - as the noisemakers say - are imitated more realistically than in reality. When writing, I was less guided by specific knowledge of the material, but rather let my memory alone set the scene. The result is a tangible dramaturgy, and the work is probably based on a state of trance.

When the composition was almost finished, I read the title of a volume in a bookshop that was lying on a table next to many others. It looked familiar and, lo and behold, I had found the source of my imagination again. Since I hardly believe in the coincidence of chance, I celebrated the book as a friendly gesture from a helping spirit whose resurrection was a little late.

Norden, commissioned by the Ensemble InterContemporain, is dedicated to Karl Rarichs. The premiere took place at the Cité de la Musique, Paris, on April 23, 1995.

M.K.
(Translation by Edition Peters)