Dieter Schnebel

MOVIMENTO, for musicians in motion, is a work of almost an hour that Dieter Schnebel wrote in 2015 for the school group that had played his music for decades: the AG Neue Musik of the Leininger-Gymnasium in Grünstadt. It is paired with Gesums - Geknarrt, a piece for spatial voices from his Schulmusik of 1974, recorded by the same group in 1985. Both are first recordings, made in the presence of the composer.

Schnebel was born in Lahr on 14 March 1930 and died in Berlin on 20 May 2018. He studied in Freiburg, where he also attended Heidegger's classes, then musicology, philosophy and Protestant theology in Tübingen. He worked as a teacher and pastor before a professorship in experimental music was created for him at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste in 1976. Music education mattered to him from the start of his career. The Grünstadt group was started about 45 years before MOVIMENTO by the music teacher Manfred Peters, who conducts the 1985 recording. Silke Egeler-Wittmann leads the 2016 performance. The productions are by SWR (2016) and Süddeutscher Rundfunk (1985).

Movement matters in MOVIMENTO even more than in the other parts of the Schulmusik cycle. The players perform with and without instruments, with and without their voices. Sounds, which by nature move in space, are carried over into bodily actions, and actions back into sound. The work is a frame for experiment, in which students and teacher develop their own versions of the ensemble and solo pieces. Its 22 sections have titles such as Langer Marsch, Lagerfeuer und Wiegenlied, Jogging, Boogie, Yoga and Exodus, with interludes headed Aufstand and Meeresstille. Schnebel described it as "music having to do with learning, practicing, rehearsing, internalizing, experiencing, and altering".

The commission marked the 45th anniversary of the group in 2015 and closed the circle of a long collaboration with the composer. According to the regional paper Die Rheinpfalz, the group gave the premiere at Donaueschingen. Schnebel's interest in the voice, from whispers to screams, runs back to Maulwerke (1974), and the 1985 Gesums - Geknarrt shows the same open approach in work with young performers.

CD, Wergo WER 7352 2, released in 2016.