Hans Tutschku

Firmament collects three works that Hans Tutschku composed between 2010 and 2014 at the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition, which he has directed since 2004. All three were written for 16 channels; the composer made the stereo versions heard here in January 2015.

Firmament-schlaflos, dedicated to Omar Alvarez and premiered at the Inventionen festival in Berlin in 2010, imagines the inner universe of dreams, fears and longings that surfaces while lying alone in a meadow on a warm night, watching the stars. It includes the recorded voice of Sarah Sun. Klaviersammlung, for the musicologist Christoph von Blumröder, starts from the collection of old, worn pianos lining the hallway between the musicology department and the concert hall of the University of Cologne. In July 2011 Tutschku spent some hours drawing “un-pianistic” sounds from them; the piece was a finalist at Musica Nova 2012.

Issho ni, Japanese for “together”, is dedicated to Sylvie Goursaud and premiered at the International House of Japan in Tokyo in 2014. It continues a line of work begun in 2009 with folksongs, lullabies, prayers and children’s songs from many cultures, retuned to share a harmony and combined with written vocal phrases, percussion and instruments. At over thirty minutes it works as a slow sound ritual that surrounds the listener.

Born in Weimar in 1966, Hans Tutschku joined the Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar in 1982, studied in Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, Paris and Birmingham, and took part in concert cycles with Karlheinz Stockhausen.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 15131, 2015.