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Peter Ablinger:
Voices and Piano


Klavier und Zuspiel (seit 1998)

bisher 62 Stücke, woraus eine Auswahl in freier Folge gespielt werden soll


die "Voices" sind / the voices are: Marina Abramovic, Amáunalik, Guillaume Apollinaire, Antonin Artaud, Carmen Baliero, Bonnie Barnett, Georges Bataille, Pina Bausch, Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Jacques Brel, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, John Cage and Morton Feldman, Angela Davis, Heimito von Doderer, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Eisler, Forough Farrokhzad, Morton Feldman, Renate Fuczik, Diamanda Galás, Alberto Giacometti, Che Guevara, Setzuko Hara, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Josef Matthias Hauer, Mila Haugová, Martin Heidegger, Billie Holiday, Lola Kiepja, Erzsébet 'Kokó' Kukta, Alvin Lucier, Anna Magnani, Mao Tse-tung, Miro Marcus, Agnes Martin, Humberto Maturana, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxiu (Mother Theresa), Roman Opałka, Kati Outinen, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ezra Pound, Ilya Prigogine, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arnold Schoenberg, Libgart Schwarz, Hanna Schygulla, Nina Simone, Gjendine Slålien, Gertrude Stein, Antoni Tàpies, Andrej Tarkowski, Cecil Taylor, Valentina Tereshkova, Lech Wałęsa, Orson Welles, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Alenka Zupančič

vorläufige Gesamtdauer/ present combined duration: 275'+329'

Dank an Thomas Musil und das IEM Graz, für Design und ständige Weiterentwicklung der Analyse-Software.
Thanks to Thomas Musil and the IEM Graz, for design und constant development of the analysis-software.

Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano Voices and Piano

Portraits of the voices in the order of composition date.

Book I/1: 1. Guillaume Apollinaire, 2. Bonnie Barnett, 3. Bertolt Brecht, 4. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, 5. Heimito von Doderer, 6. Marcel Duchamp, 7. Hans Eisler, 8. Morton Feldman, 9. Martin Heidegger, 10. Lech Wałęsa, 11. Mao Tse-Tung, 12. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxiu (Mother Theresa), 13. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 14. Ilya Prigogine, 15. Jean-Paul Sartre, 16. Hanna Schygulla, 17. Gertrude Stein, 18. Orson Welles,
Book I/2: 19. Ezra Pound, 20. Angela Davis, 21. Jorge Luis Borges, 22. Valentina Tereshkova, 23. Billie Holiday, 24. Mila Haugová, 25. Arnold Schoenberg, 26. Libgart Schwarz, 27. Agnes Martin, 28.-32. Carmen Baliero, 33. Alberto Giacometti, 34. Humberto Maturana, 35. Cecil Taylor, 36. Josef Matthias Hauer,
Book I/3: 37. Amáunalik, 38. Gjendine Slålien, 39. Kati Outinen, 40. Alvin Lucier, 41. Nina Simone, 42. Jacques Brel, 43. Miro Marcus, 44. Anna Magnani, 45. Roman Opałka, 46. Forough Farrokhzad, 47. Marina Abramovic, 48. Roman Haubenstock-Ramati,
Book I/4: 49. Setzuko Hara, 50. Erzsébet 'Kokó' Kukta, 51. Antoni Tàpies, 52. Alenka Zupančič, 53. Antonin Artaud, 54. Andrej Tarkowski, 55. John Cage and Morton Feldman, 56. Che Guevara, 57. Diamanda Galás, 58. Georges Bataille, 59. Bernd Alois Zimmermann, 60. Pina Bausch, 61. Lola Kiepja

Books II/1-24: Renate Fuczik (2006-2026), a 24 hours - or endless - piece, based on the former Austrian telephone time; unfinished. for details go to: Renate Fuczik)




Page 4 from the score for "Bertolt Brecht" with added transcription of Brecht's voice from the performance-CD, - the live-piano part beeing the juncture of a voice accompaniment and the spectral analysis of the recorded voice.


Voices and Piano, written for Nicolas Hodges, is an extensive cycle of pieces, each for a single recorded voice, mostly of a well-known celebrity, and piano. The cycle is still in progress and should eventually include about 80 pieces/voices (arround 4 hours of music). The work is always meant to occur as a selection from the whole. At present I like to write works where the whole should not be presented at once. The whole should remain the whole, and what we hear is just a part of it.

I like to think about Voices and Piano as my song-cycle, though nobody is singing in it: the voices are all spoken statements from speeches, interviews or readings. And the piano is not really accompanying the voices: the relation of the two is more a competition or comparison. Speech and music is compared. We can also say: reality and perception. Reality/speech is continuous, perception/music is a grid which tries to approach the first. Actually the piano part is the temporal and spectral scan of the respective voice, something like a coarse gridded photograph. Actually the piano part is the analysis of the voice.

Music analyses reality.

(Peter Ablinger, edited by Ruth Duckworth)



> english and german program note (dt./engl.), pdf 7KB
> set-up explanations, performance instructions, and about how to play Voices and Piano, pdf 41KB
> score: Mao Tse-tung, pdf 231KB
> listen: excerpt from "Bertolt Brecht" (piano: Nicolas Hodges)
> listen: excerpt from "Hanna Schygulla" (piano: Nicolas Hodges)
> listen: "Billy Holiday" (piano: Nicolas Hodges)
> listen: "Carmen Baliero" - 1 from 5 pieces with her voice: "La Lluvia"
> video: premiere of "Cecil Taylor" by pianist Eric Wubbels
> video: Peter Ablinger performs "Miro Marcus" from "Voices and Piano"
> transcriptions from two of the movements of Voices and Piano

> CD 1: the first 19 pieces from the cycle, piano: Nicolas Hodges
> CD 2: Mila Haugová, Billie Holiday, Valentina Tereshkova, piano: Nicolas Hodges
> CD 3: "Weiss ist schön" is a version of "Angela Davis" from Voices and Piano
> CD 4: Angela Davis, Carmen Baliero, Billie Holiday, Arnold Schoenberg, Nina Simone, Alberto Giacometti, Valentina Tereshkova, Amaunalik, Gjendine Slålien, Jaques Brel; piano: Mark Knoop
> CD 5: Jorge Luis Borges, Arnold Schoenberg, Josef Matthias Hauer; piano: Christopher Guzman
> CD 6: Cecil Taylor; piano: Eric Wubbels
> LP: Cecil Taylor, Kati Outinen, Mila Haugová, Josef Matthias Hauer, Agnes Martin and Roman Opalka; piano: Nicolas Hodges
> CD 7+8: Hanna Schygulla, Guillaume Apollinaire, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Pina Bausch; piano: Florence Millet

> Interview by Stephane Ginsburgh about Voices and Piano, 2011
> Interview by Pablo Gianera about Voices And Piano, the Cityopera Buenos Aires, and on perception, 2011
> New York Times about a choreography by Alexei Ratmansky, pdf, 2020


for score and performance CD contact the publisher:

ZEITVERTRIEB WIEN BERLIN
Bryan Eubanks, Gotzkowskystr. 15, D-10555 Berlin,
T: +49 / 176 / 47 39 29 97, zeitvertrieb@proton.me

A Note on Programming Series


siehe auch / see also:

Speaking Piano

Der Donaufürst (music and language 1979)

Phonorealism

Quadraturen

Solopieces

A Letter From Schoenberg

Deus Cantando (God, Singing)



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impressum \ this page was created by Aljoscha Hofmann \  last edited 15.03.2021 CET