Jürg Frey
Je laisse à la nuit son poids d’ombre

Je laisse à la nuit son poids d’ombre   (2019/2020)    52:07

ensemble]h[iatus 
Hélène Fauchère & Géraldine Keller  voice
Martine Altenburger  cello      Tiziana Bertoncini  violin      Fabrice Charles  trombone
Isabelle Duthoit  clarinet      Laurent Guitton  tuba      Lê Quan Ninh  percussion
Thomas Lehn  analogue synthesiser      Alessandra Rombolá  flute

Interview with Jürg Frey

‘Je laisse à la nuit son poids d’ombre’ is written for a relatively large ensemble of 10 players, including two female voices, trombone, tuba and analogue synthesiser. I’m guessing it’s the first time that you’ve composed for this combination of instruments. I think it’s beautifully atmospheric music, but was there anything about the instrumentation that you found challenging?

In fact, the instrumentation was not easy to handle, and there were two sticking points that particularly challenged me: firstly, it was the analogue synthesiser, and above all the way Thomas Lehn plays this instrument. He has a very individual approach to playing the instrument, and this approach is also strongly influenced by his work as an improvising musician. I really appreciated that Thomas took the time to come from Vienna to Aarau and to work with me; it helped hugely and that's how I learned about the instrument.

The second, even greater challenge was the two soprano voices. It really took me many weeks to figure out how I wanted to deal with the two voices and how the two voices relate to each other. At the beginning, the whole spectrum of possibilities was open: the two voices are opposed to each other, and so there is some kind of drama, or, on the other hand, the two voices merge together and sing in unison the whole time.

In addition to these two questions, which concerned a specific instrumental-technical issue on the one hand and a fundamental conceptual issue concerning the two voices on the other, there was another component that indirectly affected the instrumentation: When writing for an ensemble such as ensemble]h[iatus, which has a deeply rooted experience in improvisation, one writes not only for instruments, but also, to a particular extent, for the personalities of the musicians. I knew some of the musicians, I had already worked with some of them, and I had to find out information about the others.

What did you discover while composing the piece?

I don't think I discover much while composing. Or maybe in a more general way: I discover the piece. My composing is primarily a process of doing something, even when it doesn't seem like the piece is progressing. I am doing something; even thinking about it is doing something, or reading a book. Many decisions are intuitive, with a precise sense of what the piece will be. I feel that it could be right. When the piece is written I discover more and more things that are connected on different levels, even things that I wasn't fully aware of while working. Things that I didn't “compose” but simply ‘did’, writing notes.... And discovering all these connections and relationships means discovering what the piece is, what kind of ‘body’ the piece is, beyond “simply writing the notes”.

The piece uses various texts – a mixture of old Japanese haikus and poems by Swiss poet Anne Perrier (1922-2017), who I understand was part of the vibrant literary scene in the “Romandie”, the French-speaking part of Switzerland.  What drew you to these particular texts?

The selection of texts began with the poems of Anne Perrier, a poetic work that I have known for years but never had the opportunity to combine with music. And soon the two soprano voices issue returned: can Anne Perrier speak or sing with two voices? And then, after many attempts, the answer was: no.

I then decided to juxtapose Anne Perrier's poems with a selection of Japanese haikus. And when I had the selection on my desk, this inner vibration occurred, which subtly influenced the composition.

To me several of the texts seem to be about moments when things are hovering between two worlds, and that sense of uncertainty and fragility translates well into the music. Is that how you see the piece too?

I agree, you can see that it is already prepared in the two worlds of Haikus and Anne Perrier.  And then, when composing, it is always important for me not only to create a secure architecture in the piece, but also to compose in the opposite direction: uncertainty, fragility... everything that subversively runs counter to stability, opens up to another world.

Through my choice of text, I also approached this sense of uncertainty and fragility, much is only hinted at, but at the same time it is very precise – exactly my world.

And the music might also feel in suspension, partly because there is no bass voice to ground the composition. This ground world may then partly be reflected by the ensemble, tuba, trombone, low drums. And last but not least, the fragility arises from some open sections in the composition. It is the moment when, as a composer, I communicate with the musicians in a special way: not that I give them the freedom to improvise, but the decisions lie in their hands, that is, in their ears and imagination, and ultimately in their hearts. The musicians leave the safe ground of the written composition, moving in limbo, connected to the ensemble and to the guidelines of the composition. I then have the feeling that they are hanging around in the ensemble and in the piece, rather than actively shaping it. They become responsible for the atmosphere, the tangibility and the gentle flow of energies of the composition. So they are actually playing in an uncertain landscape.

Interview with Lê Quan Ninh of ensemble]h[iatus

Tell us a bit about ensemble]h[iatus: why and when did you set it up, and what are the aims of the group?

The ensemble was created by Martine Altenburger and myself in 2006, and our aim was to bring together musicians who were both performers and improvisers. We wanted to explore the hiatus between interpreting and improvising, hence the name given to the ensemble. Since its inception, we have performed new pièces by Vinko Globokar, Jean-Christophe Feldhandler, Peter Jakober, Steffen Krebber, Antony Pateras, Jennifer Walshe, Marco Döttlinger, Alexander Martinz, in addition to pieces from the contemporary repertoire.

As I understand it, ‘Je laisse à la nuit son poids d’ombre’ was initiated by the ensemble rather than Jürg.  Can you explain how it came about?

Yes, as a registered organisation in France, we were able to secure funding for a project. But it was my meeting with singer Hélène Fauchère, rather than Jürg, that initially sparked the idea. Hélène and I discussed composers we both liked, and two names came up: Beat Furrer and Jürg Frey, with whom Hélène had already worked. So the idea of commissioning a work from Jürg came about naturally. As an ensemble we had already explored rather turbulent aesthetics with pieces by Vinko Globokar and Peter Jakober, for example, but we also have a keen interest in the music of the Wandelweiser collective, and the project with Jürg Frey gave us the opportunity to explore a musical aesthetic that we’d never fully tackled before. Moreover, as the group already had one singer, we were also curious about what would happen with the presence of a second singer.