Text by the composer(after Luigi Pirandello)

Anna Herbst - soprano, Stefan Thomas - piano
Premiere recording from 10 Nov 2021, @ LOFT Cologne

"pʰeɾsu" is the Etruscan word for "mask" and alludes to the theatrical masks of antiquity. It is possible that this is the root of our word "person", but this can also be traced back to the Latin "per-sonare" (again, to "sound through" a mask). 

The person hidden behind a mask runs like a thread through the work of Luigi Pirandello. The Sicilian poet was convinced that all people put on a mask "as best they can". I took his early poem "La Maschera" as a background foil for "pʰeɾsu". Pirandello wrote it in 1890 while he was doing his doctorate on a phonetic topic in "Bonn on the Rhine".

When I applied the digital stylus to an old-fashioned translation of this poem, I was presented with all sorts of fancy text variants by the automatic spell-checker. Due to my everyday language reality, my correction tools are polyglot. Many of the suggestions were simply wonderful in all their absurdity. Impudently, I eventually proceeded to overwrite the entire poem with exquisite correction offers. Often I interpreted word origins and pronunciation purely phonetically. Thus I put a mask on Pirandello's "La Maschera" with an almost "blind" tool.

The result was a wondrous space of association and hallucination in which Italian, English, German, French, and Spanish are interwoven. At most, the original still peeps through the joints of this pan-European song text in some assonances. Expressive interpretation of the text would be an absurd undertaking.

phersu

𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 [ˈpʰeɾsu]. Melodrammetto per soprano e pianoforte (2021, live recording WP)

→ Deutsch weiter unten ← 
Radiophonic composition, author's production
Text written and recorded by the composer
Duration: 51'30''
Commissioned by hr2-kultur (Curator: Stefan Fricke)
Premiere broadcast: hr2-kultur: The Artist's Corner, 19 February 2022

Virtual worlds are no ‘games’ but computer-simulated environments creatively designed and explored independently by numerous avatars. Virtual worlds are ultimately elaborate graphic chat interfaces for live text and voice messages. On the other hand, they offer - especially in pandemic times - a wonderfully safe haven to try out something new artistically. What does my virtual world sound like?

A metaverse (at least those that have been around as long as Second Life) is a collective virtual habitat from the totality of all virtual worlds. It can contain derivatives or copies of the real world, but it is different from augmented reality.

My alter ego, the avatar Cuirec d'Erc, invites you on a poetic sound journey into the metaverse. Cuirec explores the virtual world like an instrument. Different scenarios pass by like a reportage. The metaversal music is modular. Continuity emerges from the superimposition of short fragments of sound, triggered unwittingly or consciously.

The text scans changing spaces of meaning with a musical ear. My language, my speaking, without shying away from semantics. Speech becomes a complex and very individual sounding structure.

It's in English, in my English. Free-float fabrication in virtual space. No hectic cuts. Loss of sense of time. Gaining the feeling of having all the time in the world. Speech as individual music that belongs to every human being. (hm 2021)


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  → Deutsch ←  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

… meanwhile, in another life … (2021)

Radiophone Komposition, Autorenproduktion
Text vom Komponisten verfaßt und eingesprochen

Dauer: 51'30''
Kompositionsauftrag hr2-kultur (Redaktion: Stefan Fricke)
Ursendung: hr2-kultur: The Artist’s Corner, 19 February 2022


Virtuelle Welten sind keine „Games“, sondern computersimulierte Umgebungen, die von vielen Avataren unabhängig schöpferisch gestaltet und erkundet werden. Virtuelle Welten sind letztendlich elaborierte graphische Chat-Interfaces für Live-Text und Sprachnachrichten. Andererseits bieten sie – zumal in Pandemischen Zeiten – einen wunderbar-sicheren Ort, um künstlerisch Neues zu erproben. Wie klingt meine virtuelle Welt?

Ein Metaversum (wenigstens die, die schon so lange existieren wie Second Life) ist ein kollektiver virtueller Lebensraum aus der Gesamtheit aller virtuellen Welten. Es kann Derivate oder Kopien der realen Welt enthalten, unterscheidet sich aber von der erweiterten Realität.

Mein Alter Ego, der Avatar Cuirec d'Erc, lädt zu einer poetischen Klangreise in meine Klangwelt innerhalb von Second Life und Craft World ein. Mein Cuirec erkundet meine virtuelle Welt wie ein Instrument. Reportageartig ziehen unterschiedliche Szenarien vorbei. Die metaversale Musik ist modular. Aus der Überlagerung kurzer Klangfragmente, die unwissentlich oder bewußt ausgelöst werden, entsteht Kontinuität.

Der Text tastet mit musikalischem Ohr wechselnde Bedeutungsräume ab. Meine Sprache, mein Reden, ohne Scheu vor Semantik. Sprechen wird zum komplexen und ganz individuellen klingenden Gefüge.

Es ist auf Englisch, in meinem Englisch. Free-float-Fabulieren im virtuellen Raum. Keine hektischen Schnitte. Verlust von Zeitgefühl. Gewinn des Gefühls, alle Zeit der Welt zu haben. Sprechen als individuelle Musik, die zu jedem Menschen gehört. (hm 2021)

… meanwhile, in another life …

… meanwhile, in another life … (2021)

....................................→ Deutsch weiter unten ←....................................
Radiophonic composition - author's production
Composition, text, speaker & realisation: Harald Muenz
Duration: 50min.
Commissioned by hr2-kultur (Curator: Stefan Fricke)
Premiere broadcast: hr2-kultur - The Artist’s Corner, 23 December 2023

sounzrodriguAIx is based on original sound recordings I made in 2022 on Île Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean. The attitude to life shown by the locals created a relaxed atmosphere that I didn't recognise from Europe.

Compositionally, a polyphony of continuous threads from nature & technology, tradition & western influences unfolds. Rodrigues' official language is English, communication is in French-Créole. My own polyglot texts alongside quotes & edited AI creations outline an intertextual space. Kick drum beats become increasingly dense until they turn into pitches, alluding to savage bus journeys under ear-deafening seggae.

AIs find little material on Rodrigues & their answers vary depending on the source language. Thus, a virtual island emerges alongside the real one. What are the names of Rodrigues' "300 marvellous bays"? A "banana" in the text refers to Simone Natale's "banal illusion", which I found at Hannes Bajohr: Apparently paradise makes even algorithms hallucinate.
...................................................................

Grundlage von sounzrodriguAIx sind O-Töne, die ich 2022 auf Île Rodrigues im Indischen Ozean aufnahm. Das Lebensgefühl der Einheimischen dort schuf eine Entspanntheit, die ich aus Europa nicht kannte.

Kompositorisch entspinnt sich eine Polyphonie durchlaufender Fäden aus Natur & Technik, Tradition & westlichen Einflüssen. Rodrigues' Amtssprache ist Englisch, kommuniziert wird auf Französisch-Créole. Eigene polyglotte Texte, Zitate & redigierte KI-Kreationen umreißen einen intertextuellen Raum. Kickdrum-Beats verdichten sich immer mehr, bis sie in Tonhöhen umschlagen, eine Anspielung auf wilde Busfahrten unter ohrenbetäubendem Seggae.

KIs finden zu Rodrigues wenig Material & ihre Antworten variieren je nach Ausgangssprache. So entstand neben der realen eine virtuelle Insel. Wo liegen deren "300 wunderbare Buchten"? Eine "Banane" im Text verweist auf Simone Natales "banale Täuschung", die ich bei Hannes Bajohr fand: Scheinbar bringt ein Paradies selbst Algorithmen zum Halluzinieren.

sounzrodriguAIx

sounzrodriguAIx. maitekkno en cinq parties (radiophonic composition; 2022-23)

Theresa Dinkhauser, clarinet

Live recording from June 28, 2014 at Galerie MAERZ 2014, Linz.at in the context of the "Der unfassbare Klang. Notationskonzepte heute" symposium curated by Christoph Herndler and Florian Neuner

"This project was realised in close cooperation with Volker Abel who did the programming work. The premiere took place in 1996 in the hören-sehen concert series of the museum Kolumba in Cologne with the dedicatee David Smeyers playing the clarinet.

In standArts, my preoccupation was with developing the deChiffrAGE concept back into the domain of instrumental play. During the performance a clarinetist sight-reads what the computer generates in real time. In line with my 'open' compositional thinking and instead of utilising traditional musical notation, for the first time in this piece I applied a series of stylised pictograms ('icons') representing fundamental musical parameters.
•	'Basic phenomenon': sustained sound, accentuated sound in different patterns, figuration.
•	'Sound quality': single note, dyad, multiphonic, side noise, noise only.
•	'Inner pulsation': trill, flutter tongue, vibrato, periodic/aperiodic repetition

Pitch, dynamics, articulation, and connectedness/disconnectedness between two events are represented graphically as well. All icons were designed with a sight-reading musician in mind and meant to serve as 'models for musical behaviour'. Later I employed similar icons also in print scores, e.g. in my compositions Seven Graphic sheets (1996/97) and ope-seynsu. (n)one sound installation for piano and random controlled CD (2001). Without allowing for mere improvisation, they codify basic musical phenomena (cf. the title standArts) in a binding way, however still entrusting many performance details to the player. Only a reasonable number of icons relating to different parameters is shown at the same time on the screen; they are to be realised instantly and are replaced one by one by new ones. This procedure remains constant until the end defining the time structure of the piece. The composition is codified in a fanned out routing chart run through by the random generator in a different way each time. 
'Normal' clarinet tones appear alongside extended techniques such as flutter tongue, multiphonics, or breath noises. By shifting the weighting between sounding events and rests towards the latter (1:2) all events are singled out to force the listener's attention focus onto their inherent qualities preventing the creation of overarching traditional 'musical tension'."
(From: Muenz, Harald. "Live random concepts and sight-reading players - the role of the computer in the era of digested digitalism", in: Contemporary Music Review, volume 29, no. 1, February 2010, 83-84.)


standArts

standArts (1996) for sight-reading clarinet player with random controlled live computer (live rec.)

Version for mezzo-soprano & 31-tone Fokker organ arranged by Ere Lievonen

Alfrun Schmid, voice
Ere Lievonen, Fokker organ

Recording of the premiere on Dec 10, 2023, Amsterdam, Small Hall of the Muziekgebouw, Huygens-Fokker Foundation (curated by Sander Germanus)

=== PROGRAMME NOTE IN ENGLISH, scroll down for German ===
As the basis for my Vicentino tribute, I have ironically collaged Italian madrigal texts by Vicentino, Gesualdo and Petrarca. Beneath a seemingly smooth surface, my music contains similarly ambiguous elements. The fifths in Vicentino's scale are always a little too low (5ct) compared to the pure fifth (702ct), and it is hard to imagine that Vicentino would have preferred these to their pure counterparts. In allo studio con Nicola I actually write pure 702ct fifths instead of Vicentino's too low ones in order to get pure triads.

In two consecutive waves, the music developed from Vicentino's scale spirals upwards to an almost Regerian chromaticism, only to get stuck on a C sharp, which is presented [in the original version] by the viola in ever new intonation variations. At this point, a Vicentino 698ct fifth is celebrated as the low Bb and F of the keyboard; I have labelled this 'La Quinta del Vicentino' (Vicentino's fifth) in the score. Above this, the C sharp of the viola becomes the most ambiguous possible third, lying exactly between major and minor, but still contained in Vicentino's scale. After this traumatic event, the music quickly disintegrates and comes to a standstill. (hm 2016)

=== DEUTSCHER EINFÜHRUNGSTEXT ===
Als Grundlage meines Vicentino-Tributs habe ich italienische Madrigaltexte von Vicentino, Gesualdo und Petrarca ironisch collagiert. Unter einer scheinbar glatten Oberfläche enthält meine Musik ähnlich mehrdeutige Elemente. Die Quinten in Vicentinos Skala sind im Vergleich zur reinen Quinte (702ct) immer ein wenig zu tief (5ct), und es ist schwer vorstellbar, daß Vicentino diese ihren reinen Gegenstücken vorgezogen hätte. In allo studio con Nicola schreibe ich tatsächlich, anstelle Vicentinos zu tiefer, reine 702ct-Quinten vor, um reine Dreiklänge zu bekommen.

In zwei aufeinanderfolgenden Wellen schraubt sich die aus Vicentinos Skala entwickelte Musik bis zu einer fast Reger'schen Chromatik empor, um sich auf einem Cis festzufressen, das von der Bratsche in immer neuen Intonationsvarianten präsentiert wird. An dieser Stelle wird als tiefes B und F des Keyboards eine Vicentino 698ct-Quinte zelebriert; ich habe dies in der Partitur mit 'La Quinta del Vicentino' (Vicentinos Quinte) bezeichnet. Darüber wird das Cis [in der Originalfassung in der Viola] zur mehrdeutigsten möglichen Terz, genau zwischen Dur und Moll liegend, die jedoch noch immer in Vicentinos Skala enthalten ist. Nach diesem traumatischen Ereignis zerfällt die Musik rasch und kommt zum Stillstand. (hm 2016)

allo studio con Nicola

allo studio con Nicola (2014/2023 arranged for voice & 31-tone organ by Ere Lievonen)

Harald Muenz&#13;
&gt;&gt; schönes klavierstück &lt;&lt; (2006)&#13;
For piano&#13;
&#13;
for elfriede&#13;
Concert live recording 26 May 2011, Frankfurt&#13;
Ernst Surberg - piano&#13;
&#13;
Score link: http://bit.ly/Ln4WrV&#13;
&#13;
Incidentally, my titles often contain a good deal of ambiguity, and, as usual, I added the heading only after the piece was finished a long time before. It certainly was not the guiding principle by which I was composing. The title is purely ironic, of course, and carries a question mark into the music. This is part of my confrontational way of thinking. In German, deliberate lower case letter spelling throughout belongs to the tradition of modernism, and reveals a further rupture. Additionally, "beautiful piano piece" is put in quotation marks, which is a reminder of Adorno's essay "Schöne Stellen" ("Beautiful Passages"). There is the German mocking term "Quintolenmusik" ("quintuplet music") for intricate rhythms in new music, and in the last third of the piece, a quintuplet passage appears, indeed: there the pianist must play the same rapid figure-of-five eight times in a row, and, if possible, eight times in exactly the same identical way as if on a cheap MIDI keyboard, without any dynamics or agogics. This banal pentatonic set piece, a commodity figuration, should sound like a "ready made", as if it had been "spliced in" from some pre-existing tape music. At the same time, the dedication "for elfriede" refers to the fact that "beautiful piano piece" could have become part of an unwritten piece of music theatre, which, at the time, I was planning and pursuing together with the Austrian poet Elfriede Czurda. (Harald Muenz / Bob Gilmore)

schoenes klavierstück

schönes klavierstück  (2006; Ernst Surberg - piano; live recording)

Harald Muenz
nearly – fast (2008) 
For clarinet/bass clarinet, marimba and piano In memoriam Karlheinz Stockhausen 

Commissioned by Cologne Society for Contemporary Music
Ensemble Mosaik: Christian Vogel - cl/bcl, Roland Neffe - mar, Ernst Surberg - pi

Score link: http://bit.ly/LQJy0M

Here, as in many of my pieces, I constructed at an early compositional stage a sort of scaffolding of numbers, which I then responded to compositionally in varying degrees. It is no coincidence that this strict principle in nearly - fast is particularly evident even on a surface level: the piece was a commission for a Stockhausen Memorial Concert in 2008, thus taking its inspiration from his Kreuzspiel; even the instrumental line-up is partly similar. The piece is a kind of utopia, three individuals doing something similar in parallel at different speeds. These speed rates often change between the instruments, and the way these three are overlaid suggests they are sometimes bringing common objects into focus. A grid of pulses is laid down that subdivides the quavers of a continuous ¾ in 4, 5 or 6 equal parts resulting in up to three different pulsations (that is 12, 15 or 18 beats per bar). Until the middle of the piece one after the other of the attacks is omitted; after this the bars are gradually replenished with pulses, so that the overall form results in a thinning and subsequent re-densification process. In the spirit of Stockhausen, pitches and intervals are developed from permuted arrangements of 4:5:6. However, permutations of numbers are substituted for the principle of a rhythmic row, and my harmonic base in nearly - fast is never a 12-tone series, but bizarre chords built from 4, 5 or 6 semitone-steps, which produce deliberate doubled notes and octaves from the outset. In strict serialism, these intervals would have been frowned upon as "wrong", whereas I welcome them as "bright spots" that I allow subsequently to grow rampant into fields of resonances and overtones. (Harald Muenz / Bob Gilmore)

nearly - fast

nearly - fast für Klarinette, Marimba und Klavier (2008; ensemble mosaik; live recording)

Commissioned by Raumklänge 2015 / Georg Dietzler (curator)
Dedicated to Marina Cervetti who has provided me with an amazing collection of mechanical bird calls
Live recording, 14 June 2015, Alte Kirche St Martinus Pulheim-Stommeln
Ortrud Kegel (flutes), Lucia Mense (recorders), Heather Roche (clarinets), Christine Chapman (double bell horn),  Harald Muenz (sound control), Youth Choir ConTakt Köln-Rath (mechanical bird calls), Georg Sachse (choirmaster)

Score link: http://bit.ly/1HLFsyE

I FIFFARI FUER FLOETE, BLOCKFLOETE, KLARINETTE, HORN, VOGELSTIMMENPFEIFEN (8 STIMMEN) UND VIERKANAL-ZUSPIEL

"I Fiffari" for mechanical bird calls, fl., recorder, clar., hn. & playback (2015, live recording)

Harald Muenz&#13;
&gt;&gt; schönes klavierstück &lt;&lt; (2006)&#13;
For piano&#13;
&#13;
for elfriede&#13;
Concert live recording 5 June 2015, London&#13;
Ian Pace - piano&#13;
&#13;
Score link: http://bit.ly/Ln4WrV&#13;
&#13;
Incidentally, my titles often contain a good deal of ambiguity, and, as usual, I added the heading only after the piece was finished a long time before. It certainly was not the guiding principle by which I was composing. The title is purely ironic, of course, and carries a question mark into the music. This is part of my confrontational way of thinking. In German, deliberate lower case letter spelling throughout belongs to the tradition of modernism, and reveals a further rupture. Additionally, "beautiful piano piece" is put in quotation marks, which is a reminder of Adorno's essay "Schöne Stellen" ("Beautiful Passages"). There is the German mocking term "Quintolenmusik" ("quintuplet music") for intricate rhythms in new music, and in the last third of the piece, a quintuplet passage appears, indeed: there the pianist must play the same rapid figure-of-five eight times in a row, and, if possible, eight times in exactly the same identical way as if on a cheap MIDI keyboard, without any dynamics or agogics. This banal pentatonic set piece, a commodity figuration, should sound like a "ready made", as if it had been "spliced in" from some pre-existing tape music. At the same time, the dedication "for elfriede" refers to the fact that "beautiful piano piece" could have become part of an unwritten piece of music theatre, which, at the time, I was planning and pursuing together with the Austrian poet Elfriede Czurda. (Harald Muenz / Bob Gilmore)

schönes klavierstück (2006; Ian Pace - piano; live recording)

schweigenderest (2000/2001)
radiophonic tape composition with Goebbels' "Sportpalast" speech from 18/2/1943

...war shall never again emanate from German soil...
Realisation: Studio of the composer (Quadro)
Duration: 12'51'' (please contact the composer for the full piece)

Concert premiere: London, The Warehouse, 18 February 2001, Ensemble Apartment House, London
Radio premiere: BBC Radio 3, 23 June 2001 (Producer: Philip Tagney)
German Concert premiere: Cologne, Aulakonzert Neue Musik der Musikhochschule, 13 June 2001
German radio premiere: DeutschlandRadio Berlin, Werkstatt , 28 September 2001 (Producer: Götz Naleppa).

In schweigenderest I turn my attention to the little-noticed but highly sophisticated non-verbal means in Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' infamous "Sportpalast" speech. Since similar pathos is unfortunately still regularly conjured up today on "state-bearing" occasions, I was interested in extracting and abstracting the typical speech act of this special rhetorical case; concrete speech excerpts only shine through in exceptional cases.
The piece proceeds roughly in five stages of approximately equal length. If the focus is initially on variants of acclamatory audience reactions, the magnifying glass shifts to technical noise, which essentially shapes our acoustic imagination of the time.
The third section could perhaps be titled "Manipulations": a sequence of quiet fader actions marks the anti-climax of the piece, a short digital, in other words "total" silence, concluded by the montage of some macabre slips of the speaker.
The next part deals with musical elements. Here, on the one hand, musical pieces of the past abused by the Nazis appear, on the other hand, Goebbels' singsong-like speaking style, which certainly contributed to the fascination of the masses, is isolated.
The finale turns to the speech itself. A version of the total two-hour "Sportpalast" speech, compressed in time in the ratio 1000:12 (the "Thousand-Year Reich" lasted twelve years), is joined by extracted articulatory background noises of the speaking Goebbels, cryptic sound bands of breathing, swallowing, snapping and clicking. At the very end there is apparently the closing motto of the original speech, but it is a forgery on my part. The order of the text words has been permuted, but hypocritically the intonation of the sentence has been restored.

As a common thread, two of Goebbels' infamous "Ten Questions to the German People" underlie each section - stretched out in time. In addition, a "memory layer" appears after about three minutes: the preceding section of the composition is recalled as if from an acoustic background memory, and in such a way that all five sections are present simultaneously in the last part.
18 February 1943 was not only the day of Goebbels' infamous "Sportpalast" speech in Berlin, but also the day when Hans and Sophie Scholl, the main figures of the resistance movement "The White Rose", were arrested in Munich. The premiere of my composition took place exactly 58 years later, on 18 February again, in London, one of the cities most affected by Goebbels' idea of "Total War", which he had proclaimed precisely in his "Sportpalast" speech - all this was not planned or foreseeable when I started thinking about the piece almost two years earlier, but in the end it is a remarkable coincidence.

"Hi-tech glossy plastic aesthetics", as often celebrated by so-called sound art, are quite alien to me. In schweigenderest, deliberately noisy, dirty audio material made of audience noise and atmospheric disturbances marks the edges and contours of speech - "... the rest is silence". (hm 2001)

schweigenderest

schweigenderest (2001; consecutive EXTRACTS)

For sight-reading oboe player with laptop

Harald Muenz, composition/concept; Volker Abel, software/co-concept; Simon Strasser, oboe
Live-recording from 4. April 2003, Cologne, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Portrait concert H. Muenz

The computer synthesises a new score for each performance. The screen indicates pitches in the traditional manner whereas durations are given by  space notation. A running cursor shows the tempo. The wind soloist plays the generated material 'a prima vista'. Formally, two alternating series of tempo blocks appear, one is accelerating and one slowing down. Compositionally speaking, the computer always combines, in various ways, two out of 21 pre-stored test pieces which are typically used for orchestral auditions (extracts from pieces of the traditional operatic and concert repertoire), however, without revealing the originals fully.

In three passages, the built-in loudspeaker of the laptop enters in competition with the player. Initially it plays the same notes that are shown on the screen, further on it starts with microtonal derivations from what the performer plays. Finally, the computer complements the player finishing the piece by imitating him. Thus, oboe and PC are inextricably linked. The "cheap" sound quality of the laptop speakers faces the beautiful timbre of the human player whilst the latter is at a clear disadvantage as far as rhythmic and intonational precision are concerned. They ask sounding questions about possibilities and limitations of technical perfection. At the same time, this also raises questions about compositional craftsmanship in the age of its mechanical reproduction.

The project was realised with the kind support of the Foundation Kunst und Kultur des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.

The Self Composer

The SelfComposer (1999 - 2002; St Peter)

Harald Muenz
BeethovEnBloc (2000)
Tape composition with the thirty-seven movements of the nine symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven (EXTRACT only)

Realisation: studio of the author
Duration: 9‘26‘‘ (the SoundCloud track is a 4'41'' extract!)
Live premiere: Dec. 1, 2000, Cologne, Elektronisches Studio der Musikhochschule, Aulakonzert Neue Musik LXV
Broadcasting premiere: DeutschlandRadio Werkstatt, Dec. 29, 2000 (curator: Götz Naleppa)

BeethovEnBloc is my personal response to a monument of German “Leidkultur” [“culture of suffering” – an untranslatable pun on “Leitkultur” (“leading culture”), the political slogan introduced by the conservative party in Germany to encapsulate the idea of German culture as the dominant culture within multicultural Germany].  The composition’s only materials are the sounds of the thirty-seven movements of the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.

After I had tested as many of the different renditions of the symphonies as possible, the recordings were first of all cleaned, balanced and timed.  For each symphony I calculated an average movement length from the durations of its individual movements. Subsequently I used time-stretching to bring all the movements of the symphony to this duration, but without altering the pitch.  This time-consuming transformation method sometimes caused rather extreme stresses or strains to the originals. Thus for each symphony I achieved a compact overlaid form of all its movements.  These nine blocks can also be performed separately

The next stage was once again to establish an average duration of these nine assemblages (and consequently of all 37 movements), so that – again without altering pitch – each individual complex could be brought to this average length of 9 minutes 26 seconds.  Finally I superimposed these nine structures and thus achieved a compact block of all the Beethoven symphonies.

The sound composition makes possible perceptual insights which “Ludwig van” would have been unlikely to grant  At first the continuous fortissimo can be quite hard for the listener, but then one is astonished by the transparency of the sound. Which of the 37 movements is at any moment the strongest?  Once one has come to terms with the volume, the superimposed dynamic fluctuations of this hallucinatory stream of sounds flood into the ear.  Finally one is able, by further focussing one’s perception, to pursue innumerable individual threads in this shining tapestry. 
(HM, translated by Susanna Eastburn)

BeethovEnBloc

BeethovEnBloc. Tape composition with the 37 movements of Beethoven's 9 symphonies (2000; EXTRACT)

Richard Craig, bass flute & speaker
Text: Amelia Rosselli
Additional speakers on fixed medium: Bettina Wenzel, Cassandra Quave, Harald Muenz
Live recording from 5 June 2009, Cologne, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter

Programme note:
Three articulatory spaces, one text, three imaginary worlds, one poetess: born in Paris as the daughter of an Irish mother, her father, an Italian anti-fascist, was assassinated when she was seven years old. She grew up first in England, subsequently in New York, studied literature and music (!) in Rome and London and finally settled down in Florence. Thanks to this polyglot background, Amelia Rosselli, from time to time, composed her poetry in three languages at the same time, in Italian, English, and French.
Following this inspiration I recorded an excerpt from her ‘Diario in tre lingue’ (‘Diary in three languages’) with respective non-native speakers (Bettina Wenzel, Cassandra L. Quave and myself) on tape and added a score for the sounding, articulating and filtering tube of a bass flute. Carin Levine, the American flutist who premiered the work, had to deal with a lot of Italian, but not with the English idiom. She pursues a for the most part determined musical-phonetic score, while the CD player’s random generator controls the 22 tracks of the CD. In this manner changing their order each time ariche is being performed, the sequences and voices coming recall dram sequences from the sphere of the subconscious. In fact, in several passages Amelia Rosselli’s text speaks exactly about this. Contrarily to the wide spread understanding of music as ‘a language, which everybody understands’ I am choosing a different approach: speech is a type of music all of us are concerned with.

ariche

"ariche" for bass flute and random controlled CD (2001)

Harald Muenz
BeethovEnBloc (2000)
Tape composition with the thirty-seven movements of the nine symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven
(This is a low quality MP3 file only for demo purposes. Uncompressed WAV available for performance upon request.)

Realisation: studio of the author
Duration: 9‘26‘‘ 
Premiere: Dec. 1, 2000, Köln (Cologne), Elektronisches Studio der Musikhochschule, Aulakonzert Neue Musik LXV
1st broadcasting: DeutschlandRadio Werkstatt, dec. 29, 2000 (Götz Naleppa)

BeethovEnBloc is my personal response to a monument of German “Leidkultur” [“culture of suffering” – an untranslatable pun on “Leitkultur” (“leading culture”), the political slogan introduced by the conservative party in Germany to encapsulate the idea of German culture as the dominant culture within multicultural Germany].  The composition’s only materials are the sounds of the thirty-seven movements of the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.

After I had tested as many of the different renditions of the symphonies as possible, the recordings were first of all cleaned, balanced and timed.  For each symphony I calculated an average movement length from the durations of its individual movements. Subsequently I used time-stretching to bring all the movements of the symphony to this duration, but without altering the pitch.  This time-consuming transformation method sometimes caused rather extreme stresses or strains to the originals. Thus for each symphony I achieved a compact overlaid form of all its movements.  These nine blocks can also be performed separately

The next stage was once again to establish an average duration of these nine assemblages (and consequently of all 37 movements), so that – again without altering pitch – each individual complex could be brought to this average length of 9 minutes 26 seconds.  Finally I superimposed these nine structures and thus achieved a compact block of all the Beethoven symphonies.

The sound composition makes possible perceptual insights which “Ludwig van” would have been unlikely to grant  At first the continuous fortissimo can be quite hard for the listener, but then one is astonished by the transparency of the sound. Which of the 37 movements is at any moment the strongest?  Once one has come to terms with the volume, the superimposed dynamic fluctuations of this hallucinatory stream of sounds flood into the ear.  Finally one is able, by further focussing one’s perception, to pursue innumerable individual threads in this shining tapestry. 
(HM, translated by Susanna Eastburn)

BeethovEnBloc. Tonbandkomposition mit den 37 Sätzen der 9 Symphonien Ludwig van Beethovens

parkfiguren
Lyrical moment with a German-Sorbian text by Róža Domaścyna for one speaking and one singing voice.

Dedicated to Beth Griffith.

Commissioned by Deutschlandradio Berlin.
Premiere: Ludwigslust, 27 Oct 1996, Deutschlandradio Kultur "Stimmen im Herbst"
Beth Griffith - soprano, Harald Muenz - speaker

Score: https://bit.ly/3Etz84Y

parkfiguren were written in October 1996 for DeutschlandRadio  Berlin’s "Voices in autumn" project in the Mecklenburgian town of Ludwigslust: the radio invited poets, composers and singers there for a weekend to instigate artistic collaboration. Originating from our national "minority without majority" (Domaścyna) the poetess Roźa Domaścyna from Bautzen (Budyšin) speaks German and Sorbian. I asked her to re-translate a poem she had originally written in German into her second language which is of Slavic origin.

parkfiguren employs the German and Sorbian versions simultaneously: both texts are being amalgamated into a new „bilingual“ idiom. This can be heard at the beginning in the speaker’s part, which uses neither the one nor the other language but maintains the newly created blend preserving the phonetic properties of both languages. Over the course of the composition this part then moves steadily toward the original languages and texts in their separate forms, whereas the singer, on the other hand, always keeps the two languages separate and treats all original words of the poem like an interpreter between both idioms by "translating" them.

parkfiguren were the first fruit, in 1996, from my ongoing commitment to phonetics which has never stopped ever since: speech sounds are used as music without setting text in a traditional manner. Here and in later pieces I'm looking for ways to detach and isolate the characteristic  (articulatory and prosodic) sounds of individual languages and to work with them musically: thus tone, intonation, accent, speech rate, register and character all become composable elements. (hm)

parkfiguren

parkfiguren. Lyrisches Moment mit einem deutsch-sorbischen Text von Róža Domašcyna (live recording)

Auditivvokal Dresden: Katja Fischer, Anne Stadler, Katharina Salden (Sopranos); Marie Bieber, Bernadette Beckermann (Mezzo-sopranos); Stefan Kunath (Countertenor); Alexander Bischoff, Jonas Finger (Tenors); Cornelius Uhle (Baritone); Timo Hannig (Bass)
Rehearsing conductor: Olaf Katzer
Live Recording Deutschlandfunk Kultur from 9 Nov 2019, Kulturpalast Dresden
Texts from Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany and from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

Link to the score: https://bit.ly/2Yb38gp

( FUNDA'MEN DEFI'NIT )

[funda'men defi'nit] for ten voices (2019)

===ENGLISH SUMMARY - scroll down===

Radiophone Komposition, Autorenproduktion
Kompositionsauftrag hr2-kultur (Redaktion: Stefan Fricke)

Stimmen der sprechbohrer (Sigrid Sachse, Harald Muenz, Georg Sachse)
Aufnahmetechnik Sprachproduktion: Julia Kümmel

Ursendung: 15. Februar 2020, 23:00 Uhr, hr2-kultur: The Artist’s Corner
Dauer: 48'58''

Bereits die Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese stellt fest, daß Sprache nicht bloß Ausdruck von Denken & Fühlen ist, sondern sprachliche Formulierungen Fühlen & Denken ihrerseits beeinflussen & kanalisieren können. Viktor Klemperer hatte in seiner berühmten "Lingua Tertii Imperii" (LTI) unmenschlichen Sprachgebrauch im sogenannten Dritten Reich als wesentlichen Beitrag zur Verrohung zwischenmenschlichen Umgangs enttarnt, der es erst ermöglichte, andere Menschen zu entmenschlichen & mit ihnen umzuspringen, als wären sie keine. Nazi-Propagandaminister Goebbels benutzte Sprache & Sprechen "virtuos", um Menschen gezielt zu manipulieren. In meiner radiophonen Komposition "schweigenderest" hatte ich mich 2001 mit einigen nonverbalen Mitteln seiner berüchtigten "Sportpalast"-Rede auseinandergesetzt.

Lange Zeit nahm ich an, daß wir in Deutschland aufgrund der Erfahrung des Nazifaschismus vor einer Rückkehr der Sprache des Unmenschen gefeit seien. Leider wurde 2017 eine Partei in den Deutschen Bundestag gewählt, die sich ganz offen hetzerischer, rassistischer, fremdenfeindlicher, antisemitischer, homophober & sexistischer - kurz: menschenverachtender Sprache bedient. So redet man bei der AfD von "Altparteien", "Umvolkung", "Überfremdung", "Lügenpresse", "Systemparteien", & so weiter.
Sprache wird Kampfmittel gegen unsere demokratische Ordnung.

In ihrem als "für Deutschland" bemäntelten Parteiprogramm widmet sich die sogenannte "Alternative für Deutschland" auch dem Themenkomplex "Kultur, Sprache & Identität". Dabei wird existierende kulturelle Vielfalt reduziert auf Parolen wie "Deutsche Leitkultur statt Multikulturalismus", "Die deutsche Sprache als Zentrum unserer Identität", oder "Kultur & Kunst von Einflussnahme der Parteien befreien". (Gerade Letzteres scheint in diesem Zusammenhang paradox.)

Die AfD will zurück in die Vergangenheit, möchte Kunst & Kultur wieder „nationalisieren“, nach außen & gegenüber "anderen" abgrenzen. Dabei tut sie so, als beschütze sie eine imaginäre "deutsche Leitkultur" vor schädlichen äußeren Einflüssen.

Solche spalterischen & ausgrenzenden Vorstellungen laufen dem Wesen von Kunst diametral zuwider: Kunst kann Menschen zusammenbringen wie kaum etwas anderes. Kulturelle Errungenschaften verfeinern uns jenseits primitiver Instinkte & animalischer Angeborenheiten, markieren den Unterschied zwischen Mensch & Tier.

Anstatt die Neonazi-Partei (Gerhart Baum) zu ignorieren, fühle ich mich als Künstler verpflichtet, die Leere & Unmenschlichkeit ihrer Floskelsprache als solche zu demaskieren & mich gegen ihre faschistischen, menschenverachtenden & kunstfeindlichen Positionen zu positionieren.


Harald Muenz: Appendix to the Speech Book of the New Monster (2019)

Radiophonic composition, produced by the author
Commissioned by npr Hessischer Rundfunk hr2-kultur (Curator: Stefan Fricke)

Voices of Ensemble sprechbohrer: Sigrid Sachse, Harald Muenz, Georg Sachse
Voice recordings: Julia Kümmel

Broadcasting premiere: February 15, 2020, 11pm, hr2-kultur: The Artist’s Corner
Duration: 48'58''

Language is not simply expression of our thinking. We also make decisions along internalised linguistic categories. As a semantic, grammatical & cultural factor, the way we speak shapes & forms our thoughts & decisions.

Talking prepares & enables actions. After the actually unthinkable - the unspeakable - has been anticipated by speech, it can happen in reality. In this way, boundaries are expanded or shifted. Speaking precedes action.

The immense power of language is unfolding over us precisely when we are no longer aware of these hidden connections.
This makes things political.

Appendix zum Sprechbuch des neuen Unmenschen

Appendix zum Sprechbuch des neuen Unmenschen (2019)

Ensemble Mosaik, Berlin: Simon Strasser (oboe and bass oboe), Martin Losert (alto and baritone sax), Arne Vierck (sound projection)
Harald Muenz (speaker)

Recording of the premiere concert on 8 December 2019 at Acker Stadt Palast, Berlin, by Deutschlandfunk Kultur

The great Swiss composer and linguist Hans Wüthrich once said that obliteration is what makes something visible. In literature, including Joyce's Ulysses, there is the technique of the "stream of consciousness", which allows the contents of consciousness to follow each other in an unregulated way, sometimes without regard to grammatical correctness. Only after the actually unthinkable - unspeakable - has been verbally anticipated, it can *really* happen. 

Together with the stage setting, the spoken texts in devil's triangle suggest an imaginary theatrical plot without allowing for a tangible narrative. Concrete data about the personnel are missing. Additional uncertainty arises because the phrases in Italian, German, English and French are formulated in a largely gender-neutral way and do not allow clear gender assignment. Speech prepares actions, anticipates them and thereby makes them possible.
Musically, devil's triangle is based on an 11-minute spontaneous hum by the composer from the year 2014. The recording of this vocal stream of consciousness was treated as objet trouvé in devil's triangle. The original appears briefly at the beginning and the end of the playback and has also influenced the instrumental parts in many different ways. Transcriptions of the hum also determine the sequence of MIDI instruments appearing in the playback layer. Due to this genesis, the piece first bore the working title 'Automatic Writing‘. To create the impression of a quasi-continuous timbre transformation, I faded 18 timbrally different hum versions gradually into each other for half a minute each. Over the course of the piece, the initially parallel pitches on the playback are increasingly microtonally detuned against the two live instruments. Finally they become wide apart mixtures at ever greater intervals. The climax of this process is the reminiscence of a timbre from Ravel's Boléro, that ingenious conceptual composition ante litteram with its shock-frozen eroticism.

During the process of creation, however, this entire compositional foil receded further and further into the background. Neither players nor audience need to be constantly aware of them. Automatic writing and transcription are pre-compositional techniques bringing with them imponderables that seem incompatible with the ethos of total control among conservatorially trained musicians. Already earlier of my pieces dealt with deviations, shifts and displacements resulting from the encounter of strict musical notation with an incommensurable counterpart. In the compositional process that follows, I always take a very intensive look at such randomly generated objets trouvés. But even then I try to consciously ignore aesthetic fears of contact or efforts at supposed "coherence" and "musical logic". We are all confronted daily with things that are beyond our control. How can we deal with imponderables in such a way that situations do not tip over? Escape into an idyllic sphere does not prevent the abyss from looking through anyway.   (hm 2019)

devil's triangle

devil's triangle (2019) for oboe, saxophone, speech, and playback

Premiere: July 11, 2016; Alte Feuerwache Cologne, Festival on Clarence Barlow's 70th birthday
Voices: sprechbohrer (Sigrid Sachse, Harald Muenz, Georg Sachse)

Im Merzen am Rheine - zweisilbig parallel

Im Merzen am Rheine - zweisilbig parallel (2016), 5) from "Das Zungenbuch"

Texts: F. Neuner, C. Filips, M. Rinck
Voices: Florian Neuner, Christian Filips, Monika Rinck (each author performing their own text)
Premiere:

VAGES unter LAS die/der VEGAS decke

VAGES unter LAS die/der VEGAS decke (2010), 3) from "Das Zungenbuch"

for two speakers, flute/alto flute/piccolo, oboe/oboe d’amore, clarinet, contrabass clarinet, percussion, piano and four track tape

Text: Florian Neuner (Spanish translations: Minerva Peinador Pérez)

Premiere recording: 22/06/2013, Berlin, Villa Elisabeth
Complete Score: https://cutt.ly/79qV1yd

Ana Maria Rodriguez, Florian Neuner - speakers
Kammerensemble Neue Musik (KNM Berlin): Rebecca Lenton - flutes, Gudrun Reschke - oboes, Winfried Rager - clarinet, Theo Nabicht - contrabass clarinet, Alexandre Babel - percussion, Pavlos Antoniadis - piano, André Bartetzki - sound

This piece - "Abendstück" - is the last of four parts from the "¡A la calle! ¡Fuera! Raus auf die Straße! Luft!" cycle commissioned by the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin for their project "Clang Cut Book Berlin - Buenos Aires". 
 
The music is based on two texts Florian Neuner wrote especially for this collaborative work; they are talking about two (?) cities named "B."  I am using transcriptions of the intonational curves from four recordings of Florian's text realised by two different German native speakers (Florian and myself) and two Spanish native speakers (Patricía Perez Prat and Minerva Peinador Pérez, the latter being also the professional Spanish translator of the original text).

The piece may be performed separately; in Berlin it was preceded by three "Satellites" which are focusing on particular aspects of the original text and employ three different combinations of instruments out of the six from "Abendstück": 
Satellit 1: piccolo, clarinet, glockenspiel, 2 megaphones
Satellit 2: oboe d'amore, contrabass clarinet, tape
Satellit 3: piano, percussion, speaker, video

Abendstueck

Raus auf die Straße! Luft! ¡A la calle! ¡Fuera! - no. 4 "Abendstück" (Berlin version)

Harald Muenz (he/him)
is a German-Italian transdisciplinary artist realising instrumental & vocal, peformative and radiophonic works with an artistic focus on phonetic composition & Ars Acustica.

Harald's compositions have been commissioned by Ensembles Mosaik, auditivvokal, hand werk, Apartment House, Modern, musikfabrik; by radio stations such as Hessischer Rundfunk, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, BBC, Deutschlandfunk, DLF Kultur, among others.
Harald's works have been performed and broadcast internationally and have been documented on several CDs (portrait CD nearly-fast with Ensemble Mosaik at Coviello).
Frequent collaborations with experimental poets (Florian Neuner, Mathias Traxler, Cristian Forte, Christian Filips, Roža Domašcyna, among others)
On the VR platform Second Life, Harald (aka Cuirec d’Erc) has realised several interactive sound installations and has been a member of the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (aom) since 2017.
Harald is also active as a multilingual speech performer (trio sprechbohrer), author and lecturer.
Harald's music has been occasionally described by others as ‘worldly,’ ‘non-conformist,’ or ‘provocative.’

https://haraldmuenz.carrd.co/
Work list on http://composers21.com/compdocs/muenzh.htm

Artist residencies
1996 Künstlerhaus Schloß Wiepersdorf (Brandenburg/Germany)
2000 Villa Aurora (Los Angeles/USA)
2021 Künstlerhof Schreyahn (Niedersachsen/Germany)
2023 Atelier Galata (Istanbul/Turkey)

Studies
Composition at Music Universities in Cologne (J. Fritsch, K. Meyer, C. Barlow) and Stuttgart  (H. Lachenmann)
PhD in Composition from Brunel University London (J. Croft)
Phonetics at Cologne University’s Institute for Linguistics (G. Heike, G. Sachse)
„Cleaning the House“ Workshop by the Marina Abramović Institute

Teaching
2001-2005 Lecturer for Aesthetic Phonetics, Institute for Linguistics, University of Cologne (part-time)
2006-11 Artistic Director of Musikhochschule Lübeck's Studio for Electronic Music (part-time)
2005-16 Lecturer in Composition Brunel University London (full-time permanent)
2016 Decision to work as a full-time freelance composer again
2017-22 current Lecturer at International Ensemble Modern Academy Frankfurt/M. (IEMA; part-time)

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