Description

“…Two feelings …”

The “… Zwei Gefühle …”, like “Mouvement”, has become a repertoire work for internationally renowned chamber ensembles. With “… Zwei Gefühle …”, Lachenmann also formulated a first central contribution to his opera “Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern”, which premiered in 1997 – there, the compositional examination of the text by Leonardo da Vinci is embedded in the course of the second part.

Premiere Stuttgart, October 9, 1992

The work was created in 1991/92. A large part of it was written in Luigi Nono’s empty house in Sardinia. There is no question that the memory of him influenced my ideas at the time.
My work on this piece was based on the experience that precisely “structurally” directed listening, i.e. the observing perception of the immediate sound and the connections at work in it, is connected with inner images and sensations which in no way distract from this process of observation, but remain inseparably connected with it and even lend it a special characteristic intensity.
It is a peculiar situation where, when deciphering a message that concerns us, the immediate work of perception: the – possibly laborious – recognition and collation of the signs on the one hand and the power of the emerging message on the other actually belong closely together, are even mutually dependent and form a closed complex of experiences.
The two speakers of the Leonardo text in “… Two feelings …” are quasi complementary halves of the consciousness of an imaginary wanderer and a silently marveling reader. They themselves function unconsciously, as it were, like the interlocking hands of a person with impaired vision, who feels the text like a precious inscription by grasping its linguistic particles individually and assembling them poorly and correctly in his mind: concentrated and sober, “absorbed”, but at the same time “affected” in the double sense of the word, for what is semantically revealed evokes precisely that situation of restless searching “in the feeling of ignorance” in which the blind groper recognizes himself.
What sounds can be understood as both: material derived and transformed in many ways from the phonetic and at the same time debris from the traditional stock of affective gestures, repoled as a sounding context of internally differently articulated acoustic fields, quasi differently heated or cooled volcanoes. A Mediterranean soundscape in inhospitable heights; a “pastoral” written with the composer of Hay que caminar in mind.

(Helmut Lachenmann, 1994)

Desire for knowledge

The stormy sea does not roar so thunderously when the fierce north wind tosses it back and forth with its roaring waves between Scylla and Charybdis, nor Stromboli or Aetna when the sulphur fires open the great mountain in a violent breakthrough, to hurl stones and earth through the air, together with the flames that emerge and spew out, nor even the glowing caves of Mongibello, when, as they expel the ill-guarded element, they furiously chase away every obstacle that stands in the way of their impetuous rage ……
But I wandered around, driven by my burning desire to perceive the great confusion of the various and strange forms that sensuous nature has produced. I wandered for a while among the shadowy cliffs until I reached the entrance to a large cave, in front of which I lingered for a while, struck by a feeling of ignorance. I crouched with my back bent. Resting my tired hand on my knee, I shaded my lowered and closed eyelashes with my right hand. And now, as I often bent back and forth to look into the cave and distinguish something there, the great darkness that prevailed inside forbade me to do so. But when I had remained there for some time, two feelings suddenly awoke in me: fear and desire. Fear of the impending darkness of the cave, but a desire to see with my own eyes what wonderful things might be inside.

Leonardo da Vinci
(German translation by Kurt Gerstenberg)

CDs
Helmut Lachenmann, Klangforum Wien, cond. Hans Zender
CD Accord 204852
Benedikt Leitner, Robert Sedlak, Klangforum Wien, cond. Hans Zender
CD Durian 097/098-2
Klangforum Wien, cond. Hans Zender, Schola Heidelberg, ensemble aisthesis, cond. Walter Nußbaum
CD KAIROS 0012202KAI

Bibliography:

Clarkson, Austin: A Note on “… two feelings, music with Leonardo”, in: Helmut Lachenmann – Music with matches, ed. by Dan Albertson, Contemporary Music Review 24 (2005), Vol. 1, p. 53-55

” ,… two feelings, music with Leonardo”. Interview with Meret Forster, in: musica viva concert program, Munich October 24, 2003, pp. 7-11