Maulwerker: Orte+Räume #5

In the series [Places+Spaces] the Maulwerker dedicate themselves in this edition to the specific resonance phenomena of the former water tank and its labyrinthian ring architecture. The pieces were composed or adapted specifically for the place.

Ariane Jeßulat: Rondeau (2024, premiere)
The piece is inspired by the music and poetry of Guillaume de Machaut. In the dynamic of fading away, six performers interact with the spatial polyphony of the Water Reservoir using voices and sparse instrumental sounds.

Adrian Mocanu: madrigali guerrieri. libro 1 (2024, premiere)
This is the first part of a cycle that Adrian Mocanu - this year a fellow of the „Weltoffenes Berlin“ programme and composer-in-residence of the Maulwerker - is writing for the ensemble. The title „madrigali guerrieri“ (madrigals of war) refers to the title of Claudio Monteverdi's eighth book of madrigals, „Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi“ (madrigals of war and love). Based on the general idea of the madrigal as a medieval vocal genre, Mocanu deconstructs it tonally and filters it through his own perception of wartime in Ukraine.

Intermission

Christian Kesten: Fünf Ringe (2021/2024)
A Book of Five Rings is a Japanese work on martial arts strategy.
By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void. (Miyamoto Musashi: A Book of Five Rings, translated by Victor Harris)

Henrik Kairies: Whistles and Reflections (2024, premiere)
The room is made to sound with flutes, hoses, bird whistles and water. Trills, both fast and quasi in slow motion, form the tonal basis. Interferences arise. Extreme echo and reverberation chambers in the water reservoir intervene strongly in the musical realisation: Like in an acoustic hall of mirrors, sound details are sometimes multiplied, sometimes obscured.

Cornelius Cardew: The Great Learning §7. Excerpt (1971)
If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well governed. (The solid cannot be swept away as trivial and nor can trash be established as solid; it just does not happen. Mistake not cliff for morass and treacherous bramble.)
from Confucius [Kǒng Fūzǐ]: The Great Learning, translated by Ezra Pound.