Ralf Hoyer

Released on occasion of his 75th birthday, Edition Telemark presents the first LP since 1986 by German composer and sound artist Ralf Hoyer. Hoyer's versatile new music oeuvre includes works for chamber ensembles, choir, orchestra, chamber opera, as well as electronic, electro-acoustic and multi-media pieces. Hoyer grew up in East Berlin where he worked as a sound engineer for the GDR record company VEB Deutsche Schallplatten in the late 1970s while studying composition at the Academy of Arts. In the 1980s, he wrote primarily chamber, vocal and electronic music as well as works for theatre. After 1990, his interests shifted towards sound and multi-media installations, and more recently, he produced a number of electro-acoustic pieces, some of them conceived for spatial multi-channel diffusion.

Presented on this LP is "zur Mitte / hindurch / hinauf", an electro-acoustic work commissioned by Hessischer Rundfunk (Hessian Broadcasting Corporation) in 2020. The composition is in three parts mirroring the emotional states laid out in the three parts of Dante's Divine Comedy, in which the poet gives an account of his encounters during his traversal of Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (heaven). "Zur Mitte" (to the centre) uses a mostly brusque and unpredictable juxtaposition of sounds and noises. "hindurch" (through) follows with feedback sounds and mysterious rhythms emerging, disappearing, and reappearing. Finally, in "hinauf" (up), complex sounds continuously transform, then transition into a stable state. The three parts broadly correspond to the ideas of damnation, cleansing, and contemplation, without retracing them in a programmatic way. Rather, the literary content is fully absorbed in sound and structure.