iris ter schiphorst

exact instrumentation:
4.2.2.2bcl.0-4.4.4.0-perc(3)-harp-prep.piano-sampler-strings (10.0.0.8.6)

Nominated for the Prix Italia 2001

"There are always strange events, intersections where different lives that never had anything to do with each other and knew nothing about each other suddenly collide. Such a coincidence of space and time can sometimes have irrevocable and dramatic consequences for all those involved. HUNDERT KOMMA NULL refers indirectly to such an event..." (Iris ter Schiphorst)

The anagram mentioned in the subtitle has the initial line: "Life is terrible" and was written by Unica Zürn in Paris in 1959:

"Better I stick laughing
Aces, dirt in the blecklight
Shamefully pale. Read
simply as a thick broom:
Life, that's terrible."

(from UNICA ZÜRN, GESAMTAUSGABE Volume 1, Annagrams, published by Brinckmann & Bose, Berlin 1988) - Reprinted with the kind permission of Mr Erich Brinckmann.

Technical details

The orchestra should be amplified as completely as possible, piano, harp, drumset and strings in any case. The solo strings should preferably have miniature microphones (e.g. Winkler microphones) so that the string sounds are clearly audible.
A sound system appropriate to the performance venue with an appropriate mixing console etc. must be provided.

For the keyboardist, either an Akai 2800 or 3000 sampler (32 MB) plus removable disc and corresponding SCSI cable is required, or an Akai 6000 sampler (32 MB).
Furthermore, a master keybaord that triggers the sampler via midi, a hold pedal (switch-on, swich-off) and a volume pedal, as well as an active monitor for the keyboarder (e.g. Yamaha MS 60 or similar) and a DI box.
These are stereo samples, which can be heard via the large PA. A zip medium (100MB) with the finished programmes is provided for the Akai 3000, and a CD-Rom for the Akai 6000.

About the composition (by Gisela Nauck)

Having written works like the 3D opera Anna’s wake (1993), the music theatre video piece Silence moves (premiered in Dresden, 1997) as well as several large-scale collaborations with Helmut Oehring including Requiem (premiered in Donaueschingen, 1998) and the dance theatre work The House of Bernarda Alba (premiered in Basel/Rome/Berlin, 1999), this is Iris ter Schiphorst’s first orchestral composition. As befits her artistic career, which saw her play the piano, bass and drums in various rock bands and work as a composer – in addition to studying philosophy, cultural and theatre studies – it is a work which would not sit comfortably in the academic framework of orchestral music. Making no attempt to conceal its commitment to the sound and rhythm of rock and soul music, it swings between a hopeless melancholy and a devastating love of life. It is these two emotional states that dominate the seventeen-minute piece. The Ballad for Orchestra, as the proper title goes, was commissioned by the musica viva series in Munich and premiered by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich’s Herkules Hall on 12 February 2000 under the conductor Martyn Brabbins.

A ballad, as a genre, can refer to content or form. In the content meaning of the word, a ballad is a dramatic narrative; used to describe form, it means a seven-part rondo. In this work, so-called Machine sections alternate with Verses and nameless sections. The piece is concluded by a non-recurring Refrain. The individual sections are sharply cut out against each other, as if quarried out of the wider context, and form three large parts played without a pause, ie. attacca:

I BESSER (BETTER) (1st verse; Machine A; 2nd verse; Machine B )
II LESE (READ) (…; 3rd verse; …)
III LEBEN, DAS IST … (LIFE, THAT’S …) (Machine C; Refrain).

However, the musical narration represents by no means a sequential process. Rather it unfolds into emotional states, carrying them into oppressive depths and juxtaposing them with relentless realism. It is a general tencency of Iris ter Schiphorst’s works that they prefer tonal states with energetic sound fields to groups of notes which are arranged in order to achieve specific effects.

The abbreviated section headings, which seem to allude to something else, are taken from an anagram by Unica Zürn, a painter and writer born in Berlin in 1916 who was forced to leave Nazi Germany. In the 1950s, she sympathised with the surrealists in Paris; aged 60, she committed suicide.
The lapidary concluding line of the anagram used in the heading to the third part reads in full: “Life, that’s terrible.” The complete anagram provided in the score and allocated to the individual verses would literally translate as follows:

I’d better
stick aces, laughing, (1st verse)
dirt in glaring light, pale as a shameful rope. (2nd verse)
Read
plainly as a thick broom: (3rd verse)
Life, that’s
terrible. (Refrain)

This pointed statement, which, in ter Schiphorst’s work, implies a necessary abstraction, is condensed in the Ballad into a requiem on a “coincidence of time and space … with dramatic consequences” (Iris ter Schiphorst, quoted from the preface to the score of Ballad for Orchestra: HUNDERT KOMMA NULL in the composer’s private study score) at a 100,0 milestone.

The most striking features of this music are its extreme range of sounds, from shabby, broken notes to shrill and extremely loud ones, and sharply defined, ‘merciless’ structural cuts. This way of carrying things to extremes is reflected, for instance, in the use of the orchestra as a sound instrument. All the instrumental groups are dominated by low registers, with the brass instruments featuring prominently. The symphony orchestra (which is reduced in the middle range as there are no second violins, bassoons or violas) is extended by a prepared piano, sampling keyboard and three percussionists. The orchestra is never allowed to sound ‘nice’, due to the microphone instructions and performance markings – for example, “sick, shrouded, dark, yet longing, with plenty of noise”, “metallic, alien”, “moaning: indeterminate pitch, different each time”, “pizz. with plectrum”, “air only, sharp tear-off”, “squeeze, with rising pitch”, “fragile, every tone fading away”, “make it screech”, “dirty gliss.” – and, again and again, “moaning”, “middle-range moaning”, “low moaning”. These moaning sounds, produced in a heavy, painful way, are characteristic of the Machine sections, as are their orgiastic rhythms.

The core section of the Ballad, where the emotions of hopelessness and intense living are merged, breaks forth abruptly in the middle part, Lese, lasting only a few seconds. It is at this moment, at about half way through the composition, that the title line of James Brown’s breathtaking 1965 soul number, It’s a man’s, man’s world, is briefly interspersed. This moment is preceded by a stretch of hopelessness where time is brought to a standstill. Then, six seconds of murderous pathos, six seconds of keyboard-sampled James Brown, six seconds of a funeral march in a hurdy-gurdy sound, followed by fragments of notes and melodies, metal blows, immalleable elements, standstill, emptiness … and then the 3rd verse. In these twelve bars, a world comes apart. With this experience still ringing in our minds, the following, archaic Machine section loses its power, although it starts using exactly the same notes as in Parts A and B. The effect, however, is different. This way of composing, building on listeners’ experiences over the course of the work, seems to be characteristic of Iris ter Schiphorst’s music. The section Machine C eventually loses some of its structural consistency, being drained in repetitive chains. The confession of an unquenchable longing is all that remains.

The fact that emotional expression is possible again in such a straightforward and intense manner, without appearing nostalgic or worn out, is due to the integral musical thinking which forms the basis of Iris ter Schiphorst’s work as a composer. Everything which the composer’s critical ear finds useful is permitted – elements or experiences from rock or soul music, tonality, noisy sounds, extreme dissonances, melodies, clusters or repetition. And of course it is always a matter of her own personal sensibility and astonishingly imaginative use of sound.

All this contributes to a shift of expression towards a kind of emotional realism in which dying and death are expressed in a similarly unvarnished, strong language as the hollowness of the surviving: bleakness rather than grief, brutality rather than drama, reality rather than appearance. This realism, however, was bound to erode the old melodies and harmonies – it has caused the sounds to break apart and made them shabby and hollow. Instead of celebrating the expression of groaning, it is the sounds themselves that are groaning.

© Gisela Nauck, Positionen 2000 (translation: Andreas Goebel)