Spiel/Abbruch

Spiel/Abbruch for instruments arranged in space and four track tape is my first work which intensively makes use of the possibilities of working with electronics. The material for the tape part was developed from sounds which had been pre-recorded, or sampled from the instruments which appear in the piece (especially percussion, piano and accordion).
The piece starts by mediating between the live ensemble and the electronic sounds through introducing near-subliminal changes (e.g. softly resounding piano harmonics). However, the electronic manipulation soon develops a dynamics of its own. As a result of a relatively small change, the recorded sounds are removed from their instrumental source and start to contradict it more and more. The idea of confrontation thus becomes the second starting point of the piece, placed in opposition to the first. This perceptual game of discovering the identical and the non-identical, with its numerous possibilities of grading and introducing intermediate values, intensifying and dulling their mutual relations forms the conceptual model applied in this piece.
Spatial arrangement also plays a decisive role here. The sounds of the instruments, situated in space, but allocated to certain positions, are accompanied by a four track tape which allows for the movement of sound in space. A scale of intermediate positions moved, replaced or moving is created. The next category applied in this perceptual game relates to the acoustic problem of different degrees of clarity according to the location of the sounds.
To prevent the inner dynamics of the electronic material from leading to excessive “relishing” of the sound, they have been balanced by the stressing – noticeable in at least one point of the piece – of the technical aspect of the tape as an instrument of reproduction.
Repetitions, experienced with varying degrees of clarity as technical recreations of the past, throw a new light on the whole temporal-musical progression.
Jörg Birkenkötter