The Mills College Music Department and Center for Contemporary Music
(CCM) present:
Jean Macduff Vaux Composer-In-Residence
HELMUT LACHENMANN
Concert:
Saturday, January 26, 2008
8:00 pm
Lisser Hall
$12 general, $6 seniors and non-Mills students
Tickets may be purchased at the door, or online at:
http://www.boxofficetickets.com
(Free to Mills students, faculty, and staff)
Mills College
5000 MacArthur Blvd
Oakland, CA 94613
510.430.2296
http://music.mills.edu/events
Program:
"Wiegenmusik" for piano
"Ein Kinderspiel" for piano
(Helmut Lachenmann, piano)
"Gran Torso" for string quartet
(Graeme Jennings, violin; Erik Ulman, violin; Ellen Ruth Rose, viola;
Hannah Adario-Berry, cello)
"Allegro Sostenuto" for clarinet, cello, and piano
(Matt Ingalls, clarinet; Geoffrey Gartner, cello; Christopher Jones,
piano)
"Toccatina" for solo violin
(Graeme Jennings, violin)
Helmut Lachenmann, the 2007-2008 Jean Macduff Vaux
Composer-in-Residence at Mills College, is one of the most influential
European composers of the late 20th- and early 21st-centuries. He
studied in Venice with Luigi Nono (1958-60) and at Cologne (1963).
Beginning in the late 1960s, Lachenmann explored a new and innovative
musical language. In works such as temA (1968), for flute, voice, and
cello, and Air (1969), for orchestra and percussion soloist, he used
instruments and voices unconventionally, producing new sounds and sound
combinations in which all instruments were given equal weight.
Lachenmann questions past musical assumptions in his many postserialist
compositions and in his varied musical writings. Other works include
the string quartet Gran Torso (1972), Mouvement (vor der Estarrung)
(1984) for chamber orchestra, Serynade (2000) for piano, and the opera
The Little Match Girl (2001). A well-known teacher, Lachenmann has been
a mentor to many important younger composers.
Lachenmann has referred to his compositions as musique concrète
instrumentale, implying a musical language that embraces the entire
sound-world made accessible through unconventional playing techniques.
According to the composer, this is music "in which the sound events are
chosen and organized so that the manner in which they are generated is
at least as important as the resultant acoustic qualities themselves.
Consequently those qualities, such as timbre, volume, etc., do not
produce sounds for their own sake, but describe or denote the concrete
situation: listening, you hear the conditions under which a sound- or
noise-action is carried out, you hear what materials and energies are
involved and what resistance is encountered". His music is therefore
primarily derived from the most basic of sounds, which through
processes of amplification serve as the bases for extended works. His
scores place enormous demands on performers, due to the plethora of
techniques that he has invented for wind, brass and string instruments.
Cost: $12 general/$6 seniors and students