This is a longer piece for ensemble, objects, stereo tapes and image projection. It aims at weaving a range of relationships (musical, sonic, intermedial, semantic and communicative, or even "ritual" ones), into a very subtle yet firmly connected context. In some places the border to entropy seems to be crossed, yet the notion of an intentional, designed structure remains always clear. Music here, is space: a precondition for any meaning (in an anthropological sense). The title "things without us, their slowness and the freedom of the people (in music)" refers to this space, apart from stable, predefined meanings, apart from the world as a conceptualized, readily available place. It casts a tender look at all the possible perceptions of things that, in the de-humanizing frame of capitalism, are increasingly reduced or inaccessible to us.

The piece was performed by Platypus Ensemble (www.platypus.or.at) under the direction of Jaime Wolfson,
as were
Kaoko Amano, soprano, objects
Elena Gabbrielli, flutes, objects
Anna Koch, clarinets, objects,
Marianna Oczkowska, violin, objects
Antonina Goncharenko, viola, objects
Stefanie Prenn, cello, objects
Gregor Aufmesser, double-bass, objects
Jan Satler, piano
Julius Rüggeberg, sound engineering
(& Hannes Dufek, image projections)

on Dec 15th, 2022 at REAKTOR Vienna
live-recording by Aron Ludwig

die dinge ohne uns, ihre langsamkeit und die freiheit der menschen (in musik) (h.m., m.m., s.z.)

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 the recording of the world-premiere of my piece "A black heart, the death of a friend and the end of a place (some lessons in falling apart)", which was composed for the US-American Empyrean Ensemble. It was performed on Oct. 13th, in the Recital Hall at the Ann E. Pitzer Center of U.C. Davis, California. The piece is in four movements and features, in each part, some approach to the notion of things falling apart, falling away, and how to deal with it, if possible at all. It employs the live instruments Oboe, Clarinet, Percussion, Violin and Cello, with all instruments except the Percussion also amplified, and four different tapes. They are also in spatialised form, but this is only partially audible on the stereo recording.

Musicians in this performance were
Kyle Bruckmann, Oboe
Peter Josheff, Clarinet
Ben Prima, Percussion
Terry Baune, Violin
Thalia Moore, Cello
Matilda E. Hofmann, Conductor

Stephen Bingen, Sound Engineer

A Black Heart, The Death Of A Friend And The End Of A Place (some lessons in falling apart)

This is a new recording of a piece I wrote originally in 2020, for the wonderful Duo HEDDA (Sophia Goidinger-Koch, violin, Klaus Haidl, guitar). The piece was then premiered only via stream (because of COVID-19) and has since been performed mostly without any live audience, leading to the concert of January 17th, 2025 to be one of the first concerts with an actual, live, in-place audience. It was a very rewarding, lovely experience, and the piece did seem to have resonated with some of the audience members quite a bit. The performers of this concert were again Sophia Goidinger-Koch and Klaus Haidl / HEDDA.

Earlier, I wrote about the music:

The piece is a delicate interplay of small and fragile sounds, perhaps like the dance of particles or a microscopical impression of supersensitive nervous textures. It is an attempt to approach the idea, semantics and the metaphorical surroundings of "intimacy", but in a somewhat sophisticated, subtle, and - necessarily - mediated way. The two instruments mostly act as one sound-body, complementing, reciprocating, or mirroring their respective gestures and fragments. This happens in several axes of reflection: mostly, the reactions are immediate, or in very close timely range, but there are larger distances, too large, in fact, to be perceived directly, where this happens, too. Furthermore, these axes have more dimensions than just the direct imitation - they might be harmonically linked, or linked in a transposed sense, or even connected via a transformative device (which sometimes is necessary simply because of the difference of the two instruments). 

It is a very soft, very tender piece in many ways, it seems, the two instruments orbit around this idea of "intimacy", and this in itself is very intimate playing, and yet there is, in all their being connected, always an unsurmountable difference, the very threshold separating us from each other, too.

With this, I leave you to, hopefully, enjoy it!

studies in intimacy II the deep mirror (17-01-2025, HEDDA)

The piece "15 momente für wk" (15 moments for wk), written in 2023 in response to the unexpected, much too early and heavy loss of a great friend, Werner Korn, is a collection of 15 brief fragments. It - allegedly - encompasses a wide range of different musical ideas, "eras", and styles, so as to pay reverence to someone who really loved and was able to enjoy a vast area of musical expression. The piece was written for a memorial concert, and it is that, but it is also a sort of spiritual greeting to - well, to whatever you wish to imagine at this point: the "beyond"?, the "afterlife"? or just a hole in the ground?

Either way, it is dedicated to the memory of Werner, who lives on in our thoughts, hearts, souls and our very being, doing what we can to make more interesting music.

This performance took place on May 13th, 2025, at Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna, in a project by the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW), the Forum Neue Musik. The performer here is Jure Goručan, a silent / gestural moment in the piece was taken out due to irrelevance in the audio format. I hope you enjoy it!

15 momente für wk (2023) (Jure Goručan)

This is the first piece out of a cycle of 14 pieces (hence the title) for Soprano and Flute, which I wrote for Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Iva Kovač (Flutes). The cycle belongs, in a way, to a number of pieces under the collective identifier "exercises in transience", this one being the seventh "exercise". The unifying idea behind the pieces in this work series is not any kind of musical of formal aspect, but rather their metaphorical content, as in a way all of the pieces aim to work with the sensation of transient, passing life, transient reality, being mortal. There are no clear-cut indications as to how this needs to be adressed in a piece for it to belong to the series, however they do tend to feature similarly fragile sounds, partially unstable constellations, loose formal strategies and so on.

Some of these characteristics do also apply here, however the (perceived) necessity to use some text for the piece because of the presence of a singer lead to a slightly different approach. In "saying the same thing 14 times over", 14 different texts, from different authors across time(s), in different contexts and from different parts of the globe, are used to say, essentially, the same thing. This is also reflected in the flute part which is based on a recurring set of pitches. 

This is a live recording of the piece from the first performance which took place on May 25th, 2025, at Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht, Vienna, with the very fabulous performers Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Kovač (Flutes).

saying the same thing 14 times over - I (after Jorge Luis Borges)

This is the seventh piece out of a cycle of 14 pieces (hence the title) for Soprano and Flute, which I wrote for Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Iva Kovač (Flutes). The cycle belongs, in a way, to a number of pieces under the collective identifier "exercises in transience", this one being the seventh "exercise". The unifying idea behind the pieces in this work series is not any kind of musical of formal aspect, but rather their metaphorical content, as in a way all of the pieces aim to work with the sensation of transient, passing life, transient reality, being mortal. There are no clear-cut indications as to how this needs to be adressed in a piece for it to belong to the series, however they do tend to feature similarly fragile sounds, partially unstable constellations, loose formal strategies and so on.

Some of these characteristics do also apply here, however the (perceived) necessity to use some text for the piece because of the presence of a singer lead to a slightly different approach. In "saying the same thing 14 times over", 14 different texts, from different authors across time(s), in different contexts and from different parts of the globe, are used to say, essentially, the same thing. This is also reflected in the flute part which is based on a recurring set of pitches. 


This is a live recording of the piece from the first performance which took place on May 25th, 2025, at Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht, Vienna, with the very fabulous performers Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Kovač (Flutes).

saying the same thing 14 times over - VII (after Wang Wei)



This is the fourth piece out of a cycle of 14 pieces (hence the title) for Soprano and Flute, which I wrote for Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Iva Kovač (Flutes). The cycle belongs, in a way, to a number of pieces under the collective identifier "exercises in transience", this one being the seventh "exercise". The unifying idea behind the pieces in this work series is not any kind of musical of formal aspect, but rather their metaphorical content, as in a way all of the pieces aim to work with the sensation of transient, passing life, transient reality, being mortal. There are no clear-cut indications as to how this needs to be adressed in a piece for it to belong to the series, however they do tend to feature similarly fragile sounds, partially unstable constellations, loose formal strategies and so on.

Some of these characteristics do also apply here, however the (perceived) necessity to use some text for the piece because of the presence of a singer lead to a slightly different approach. In "saying the same thing 14 times over", 14 different texts, from different authors across time(s), in different contexts and from different parts of the globe, are used to say, essentially, the same thing. This is also reflected in the flute part which is based on a recurring set of pitches.

This is a live recording of the piece from the first performance which took place on May 25th, 2025, at Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht, Vienna, with the very fabulous performers Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Kovač (Flutes).


saying the same thing 14 times over - IV (after Li Bai)



This is the ninth piece out of a cycle of 14 pieces (hence the title) for Soprano and Flute, which I wrote for Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Iva Kovač (Flutes). The cycle belongs, in a way, to a number of pieces under the collective identifier "exercises in transience", this one being the seventh "exercise". The unifying idea behind the pieces in this work series is not any kind of musical of formal aspect, but rather their metaphorical content, as in a way all of the pieces aim to work with the sensation of transient, passing life, transient reality, being mortal. There are no clear-cut indications as to how this needs to be adressed in a piece for it to belong to the series, however they do tend to feature similarly fragile sounds, partially unstable constellations, loose formal strategies and so on.

Some of these characteristics do also apply here, however the (perceived) necessity to use some text for the piece because of the presence of a singer lead to a slightly different approach. In "saying the same thing 14 times over", 14 different texts, from different authors across time(s), in different contexts and from different parts of the globe, are used to say, essentially, the same thing. This is also reflected in the flute part which is based on a recurring set of pitches.

This is a live recording of the piece from the first performance which took place on May 25th, 2025, at Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht, Vienna, with the very fabulous performers Kaoko Amano (Soprano) and Kovač (Flutes).


saying the same thing 14 times over - IX (after Yuan Hongdao)

This is a live recording from March 5th, 2016. Jaime Wolfson, piano, dictaphones, radionoise, playing the full length version of the piece with additional layers and the noise foundation. Enjoy!

band linie horizont Ib

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)

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

Freelance composer, sound artist, improviser and musician * Dad of two (2020, 2023) * Co-founder and long-time chairman of Ensemble Platypus (2006-2019) * Member of makemake produktionen (2011-2017) * As of 2019 holder of a doctoral degree (Dr.artium)* Educator at MDW / Vienna (2023)

Some scores are available at Verlag Neue Musik and via babelscores
http://www.verlag-neue-musik.de 
https://www.babelscores.com/HannesDufek

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

die dinge ohne uns, ihre langsamkeit und die freiheit der menschen (in musik) (h.m., m.m., s.z.)

Hannes Dufek

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