ELLEN UGELVIK, PIANO

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conventional manner. The historical dialectics of the instrument itself, the inescapable conflict of being an expensive piece of furniture assuring the bourgeois self-conception on the one hand, and being a laboratory of sound experiment and aesthetic change on the other, may never be resolved. It is rather within this conflict that the prospects of contemporary piano music unfold. Many of the earlier pieces Lachenmann has written for the piano have exposed single aspects of the instrument, like the grating sound in Guero (1970) or the isolation of different parameters and filter effects in Ein Kinderspiel (1980). Serynade is actually the first large-scale piece Lachenmann has written for piano solo. The title refers to a genre of light music to be performed outdoors and/or in the evening, related to the ständchen and the divertimento. (The misspelling "y" in the title refers to the dedicatee of the piece, Yukiko Sugawara.) There is in fact a lightness and leisure to be found in this piece. The glissando from the bottom to the top of the keyboard is really just for show, a gesture hardly to be taken seriously as material; it expresses nothing but the bold manner in which something is brushed away. The question remains of what happens to the music that Lachenmann evokes. Almost all the figures and techniques Lachenmann uses have been explored and contextualized. He is thus not inventing anything from a technical point of view, instead the question he seems to be asking recalls Arnold Schoenberg's question when he was told that many young composers were using his dodecaphonic method: "Yes, but do they also make music?" One may listen to Lachenmann's Serynade as an essay on musical expression. Can a musical gesture that has been coded with meaning be used in an original, genuine way? The answer is of course yes, as 600 years of keyboard music have proved. Yet Lachenmann's focus seems to point further and further into the piano itself, as if he is directing his musical imagination into the nooks of the instrument, searching for a residue of resonance within the vibrating wood. One of the figures central to Lachenmann's piece is the sound shadow cast when a silently struck piano string vibrates sympathetically. This effect reveals the gap between the façade of sound, the outspokenness of the struck key, and its inner life. In Manualenes poesi Christian Blom uses the same effect to conceal the poetic core of the music behind a wall of staccato clusters. Of course, the clusters in the foreground are themselves musical and not just a disturbance, they are dry and hard and without humour. The chords that sound sympathetically are made possible by this façade of sounds in the first place. Still the essence of the music does not unfold in the forefront, it has been moved to the periphery of not only the instrument, but of the listening radius altogether. "Do you understand?" he asks the pianist when the second part, a Satie-like arrangement of chords, begins. "Understand" that the keys that are now struck correspond with the ghost sounds from the first part. When Jacques Derrida developed the idea of “hauntology” he was not thinking about music. Yet the idea of a haunting of ideas and sounds undercutting the musical present has been adapted by many com decade. The li also means that to put it solemn It is not alwa interesting let a Among the gho the haunting vo exposed to. It i driven mad by m the Imaginary regions of soun listener (for th preludes the sc describing the 4
ynade as an usical gesture be used in an of course yes, e proved. Yet t further and s directing his the instrument, ce within the s central to ow cast when ympathetically. the façade of ck key, and its uses the same music behind the clusters in l and not just a and without athetically are ds in the first es not unfold in eriphery of not tening radius sks the pianist rrangement of keys that are t sounds from developed the g about music. s and sounds been adapted by many composers and artists within the last decade. The listening of elsewhere and elsewhen also means that we are shifting perspectives, that we, to put it solemnly, are pushing frontiers. It is not always the loudest who are the most interesting let alone the most intelligent to listen to. Among the ghosts of the past we most certainly find the haunting voices of the Sirens that Ulysses was exposed to. It is, of course, an aspiring claim to be driven mad by music. Christian Jaksjø's Encountering the Imaginary [Ulysses] is an attempt to access regions of sound that have been withdrawn from the listener (for the sake of his own safety). Jaksjø preludes the score with a text by Maurice Blanchot, describing the song of the Sirens as unfulfilling yet being "a sign of where the real sources and real happiness of song opened", and the text seems like an antedated description of Jaksjø's piece, in which the instrument is engaged in a self-modulating song through an elaborate electro-acoustic exchange between the played piano part and an electronic soundtrack. There is also a close connection between Jaksjø's Encountering the Imaginary and Lachenmann's Serynade, the material of the former having been derived from the latter, exposing those sounds that Lachenmann only hinted at. But more than being a frottage of Lachenmann's piece Jaksjø has tapered the project of listening deeply and beyond, turning the piano into a guidepost that leads well into the 21st century. 5
Page 1 and 2: Serynade ELLEN UGELVIK, PIANO CHRIS
Page 3: CHRISTIAN BLOM Manualenes poesi (20
Page 7 and 8: 10) aver averet blitt spilt avantga
Page 9 and 10: lder og gleder den foregriper r ins
Page 11 and 12: tertainment of accepting the modera
Page 13 and 14: soddtangen. , mekaniske r formell e
Page 15: Ellen Ugelvik concentrates on disco
Page 18 and 19: Serynade Recorded 8-10 N Producer:
Page 20: Serynade 1. CHRISTIAN BLOM The poet

ELLEN UGELVIK, PIANO

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