“Wind, and more broadly air, are an inseparable part of music. Without air, there is simply no music,” underlines Matthias Krüger, one of Germany’s leading composers of contemporary music. In L’être contre le vent – an improvisation for computer-controlled organ and electroacoustic processing – he explores the timbre of the organ by confronting the mass of sound with the properties given to it by electronics. Tobias Tobit Hagedorn will play the organ during the Polish premiere of the work.
Krüger was inspired to create L’être contre le vent (“to be against the wind”) by the French poet and essayist Paul Valéry and his La jeunesse parque from 1917. The references to the power of the wind contained in the poem were a starting point for the composer, in whose approach the breeze is also a powerful metaphor for the omnipresent sound. Krüger places it in the context of the organ generating sound by using the vibrations of air flowing through the pipes grouped into voices.
“The organ is rightly considered the oldest synthesizer in the world. But its sound has always been acoustic – physical, with real air circulation that allows the instrument to breathe […]. So we connect the instrument to a computer, controlling its valves and airflow through complex, seemingly endless rhythmic and harmonic patterns, while simultaneously combining acoustic sound with its electronic emulation and live electronic processing, thus using its inner potential to explore the essence of what music itself is: time and space. And we, the listeners, become, in Paul Valéry’s words: creatures “ ‘defying the wind, in the harshest air, / Receiving the call from the sea in the face’ ” is how Krüger describes his new project.
The sound layer of the work will be enriched by a pre-premiere video created live by Mira Boczniowicz.
