This is an extension, or rewriting, or re-editing of a piece for piano solo dating from 2014. In this version, a bass clarinet, some text and variations in the dictaphone layer are added. In this particular rendering of the piece, the role of the bass clarinet player is divided so that two people can play this part, creating a still more dense, manifold and deep performance (I think).

The piece has been performed live on September 22nd, 2021, in Prague, by Teresa Doblinger, voice and machines, Theresia Schmidinger, bass clarinet, and Frederik Neyrinck, piano and machine.

The picture has been taken 3 minutes from where I live and heavily edited.

band linie horizont Ig (Version for Trio)

This is a short excerpt from a rather large work recently completed and premiered at Osterfestival Hall in Tirol, "Diachronic Sound Sculptures". While there are many possible things to say about the piece as a whole, very basically it is an attempt of intertwining or connecting or looking for overlaps between Baroque and New Music, in a most broad sense. The piece features various sounding "sculptures" (spatio-temporal constellations rather than pieces, maybe), which represent various facets of this - some say - (un)likely bond between different worlds. Due to legal reasons, I can only share this small piece, a duo of modern and Baroque violin, sculpture VII "infinitesimal", dealing with the possibility of approximation.

The marvelous and brave players in this piece are
Irma Niskanen, Baroque violin, and Sophia Goidinger-Koch, modern violin.

Diachronic Sound Sculptures - Sc. VII Infinitesimal

This is the third piece of my series band_linie_horizont, a series of works employing very concentrated and sort of reduced material while at the same time opening up the form in many meaningful ways. The piece is a solo for violin and tape(s), with an optional piano part. The piano part itself is very freely structured, as it provides only an assortment of material that the player can then, within some constraints, choose by herself. 

The piece was written as a commission for a concert in Alte Schmiede Vienna on January 24th, 2024, for the two wonderful performers, Eirini Krikoni, violin, and Kimiko Krutz, piano, as appearing under their joint moniker "Oxymoron Duet". 

Eirini Krikoni - violin 
Kimiko Krutz - piano | http://www.kimikokrutz.com/
find them on Facebook, too - they are great!
https://www.facebook.com/people/Oxymoron-Duet/100064872164451/

band linie horizont III: cartography of some early mornings (Oxymoron Duet)

This is me performing a very reduced Piano solo piece I composed last year. The piece now exists in five different versions, and I intend to write alternative endings, too. The more open the form, the better! The recording took place, hilariously, I find in retrospect, in front of 35 Japanese and Austrian businesspeople in the course of an award ceremony for three of them at the Austrian embassy in Tokyo in June last year. We sort of stumbled upon this concert in the course of Ens. Platypus' Re:construction 2014 exchange project. They seemed to like it - or maybe they were just super polite, who knows. Anyway - here goes!

band/linie/horizont I (2014)

This is yet a new version of this piece - "because things need to stay in flux", as its title so aptly states. The "original material", so to speak, for clarinet, violin and piano was slightly adapted and interwoven with two additional dictaphone/pre-recorded layers (of - mostly - the very same material). In addition to that, a percussion and Soprano layer with three electric fans and two radios was written to be performed simultaneously. In this layer, at one point, yet another dictaphone is used. The original material, as before, is built from different fragments and can be used freely, while the new material was written in "stations" for the two players to go to and perform. The result is a very freely bound, but recognisably cohesive form of music with surprising connections, I think. Enjoy!

weil die dinge im fluss bleiben müssen - version 19.11.2015

The second piece in the "AUSSEN" (outside) series and was commissioned by Noise-Bridge (http://christiefinn.com/noise-bridge). Soprano and clarinet are its base setup, but there are various technical (metronomes, computers, radios, different audio playing devices) and natural objects (branches, water, sand)used. The score consists of eleven fragments which can be played optionally, repeated, performed in a row, etc. In this specific rendering, the duo chose to perform everything from 1 to 11. The spoken (and sometimes: the sung) text is an overlay from text written by me, by the singer and, to a lesser degree, by the clarinetist (which results in a different outcome for each performance). In this happy coincidence here, Christie Finn turned out to be a poet herself! Enjoy!

AUSSEN II (von Außen) (live, 18.12.2015)

In June 2016, I've spent a month on a residency programme in Northern Iceland (check out www.listhus.com !). An important goal for me during this time was to try and capture the feeling, the atmosphere, many images, thoughts and memories of this unique and uncommon place. I wanted to collect and re-collect this period poetically, musically, whichever you prefer. One result of this is this track, part I of a two-part hommage to the wonderful, strange, lonely, raw and unforgettable town of Ólafsfjördur. The "soundscape" is built entirely on sounds recorded or produced during the residency, most sounds are field recordings from Ólafsfjördur and its surroundings. Also, you will here the voices of my fellow residents in June 2016 as well as the two organisers of the program,
(in order of appearance)
Andrea Krupp (www.andreakrupp.com)
Sinead Onora Kennedy (http://sineadonorakennedy.com/)
Yen Peng Tan (http://whitewhitewind.wixsite.com/tan-yen-peng)
Sigurdur Svarvarsson
Joe Scullion (http://cargocollective.com/joescullion)
Alice Líu (http://aliceliusportfolio.weebly.com/)
Merel Stolker (http://www.merelstolker.nl/)
Serene Hui Sze Lok (http://www.szelokserene.com/)
Soo-yeun Ahn (http://www.sooyeunahn.com/).

All of them read small parts of a text I wrote for this piece, in their respective mother tongues. They have all been equally kind and complaisant and agreed to even translate the parts I assigned them. Thank you very much, all of you, wherever you are now! I hope you are happy and full of projects, ideas and lots of love!

Ólafsfjördur soundscape I

AUSSEN IV for string quintet, piano and various objects is the fourth piece in the ongoing series of "AUSSEN" / OUTSIDE-pieces (the first and second one can also be found here).

The pieces in this series share a common poetics that hopes to loosen or diminish the existing borders between the spheres of "art" and "life", meaning between all things poetic and beautiful and all things profane, between some things we accept and wish for in art and others that are not given this privilege. The pieces all aim for a superstructure of music as an art-form - music as a form of life, as an expression of life. 

Aside from different choices in terms of sound-sources or playing-techniques, this also leads to changes in approach to the score, to composition and to art and life in general. Life, after all, is not a form to be fulfilled, it is not a predesigned track to follow and it is not intricately designed structures or a set of cogwheels. Life is time flowing. It is growing, ageing, dying, and there is no room for egotism and self-centeredness. 

Thus, this music is born out of a somewhat joint effort, the score is delivered in fragments and full of choices, the actual sounding "piece" is the result of my choices, the performer's choices and, finally, your listening. This is one version, there are thousands other possible versions, all under that same name, AUSSEN IV. 

Thank you very much for a marvelous performance to Ambitus extended (https://www.facebook.com/ambitus.extended), as were

Silvia Kanicki - violin I
Johanna Lacroix - violin II
Lena Fankhauser-Campregher - viola
Jörg Ulrich Krah - violoncello
Maximilian Oelz - double bass
Kaori Nishii - piano

Thanks also to Julian Siffert for recording this!

AUSSEN IV: quotidien, quotidienne (Ambitus Extended, 29.11.2016)

Hannes Dufek - atem/felder.palimpseste/transkriptionen,

a haunting, eerie piece with a certain tint of darkness to it. And some very charming dictaphone machines, requiring close control by the violist, the clarinetist, partially the flutist and, finally the pianist. Formally, there are iterating repetitions, overlapping and interchanging layers and a directional motion, too. An echo-chamber, if you will, feedbacking into some kind of closure. Please enjoy Ensemble Platypus playing, as were

Doris Nicoletti - flutes
Anna Koch - clarinets
Sophia Goidinger-Koch - viola
Barbara Riccabona - cello
Luca Lavuri - piano
Jon Svinghammar - conductor

Hannes Dufek - atem/felder. palimpseste/transkriptionen (2014)

Changing my emptiness is an electronic composition featuring various voices speaking about things, ideas and situations which all are important to me, play a role in my daily thought or influence what I am doing and what I am not doing. Furthermore, in the arrangement of these voices, the deep and probably inevitable conflict between the world with all its harsh and sometimes fatal contradictions and music, making music, playing music as a symbol of commitment, as it so often seems, by omission, or to a cause less and less meaningful in the larger scheme of things, but still very meaningful in itself. Music in capitalism at full speed is not an easy thing, it cannot be. Who we are, who we could, and who we should be - these are also not simple questions, and they are questions to be asked and answered every day anew, as we live in a very complicated, tangled world. 

The piece is originally in 4-channel, I made this stereo mix for soundcloud listeners. I hope it sounds good to you!

changing my emptiness (stereo mix, 2018)

A few examples from my sound design for the 2019 production of "Die lächerliche Finsternis" by young shooting star author Wolfram Lotz under the direction of emerging director Lukian Guttenbrunner at the Munich Volkstheater. The sound design included both stereo and 4-channel tracks, and the examples provided here show only a little bit of what actually is happening in the performance, sound-wise. Anyway, it is a genuine impression, and also, the piece is still running and will be, as far as I know, up until the end of 2019. It received many positive reviews and many of the performances were sold out or nearly so, but there should be opportunities for you to see it, should you want to! 

You can check for performances at https://www.muenchner-volkstheater.de/

Cheers to the wonderful actors and team of the production, I miss you guys!

Die lächerliche Finsternis (Thema IV)

www.hannesdufek.com // hannes_dufek@gmx.net

I am a Vienna-based composer, improviser and musician. Mostly contemporary / new music, with an emphasis on socials space(s) and agencies emerging from artistic practice. Maybe consequently, I am also very interested in making music and sound for theatre and/or theatrical pieces, or other ways of working with music and sound beyond the finite space of concert practice.  

www.hannesdufek.com
www.kafra.at

Freelance composer, sound artist, improviser and musician * Soon to be a dad! (2020) * Co-founder and long-time chairman of Ensemble Platypus (2006-2019) * Member of makemake produktionen (2011-2017) * As of 2019, (kind of) proud holder of a doctoral degree (Dr.artium)* Part of KAFRA (Band)

Some scores are available at Verlag Neue Musik
http://www.verlag-neue-musik.de 

Other links you might be interested in:
www.platypus.or.at
www.makemake.at

AUSSEN IV: quotidien, quotidienne (Ambitus Extended, 29.11.2016)

Hannes Dufek

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