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BERGSON, MOURNING AND MEMORY: THE FRAGILITY OF TIME IN KLAUS LANG'S TRAUERMUSIK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2017

Daniel Wilson
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Abstract

The music of composer Klaus Lang (b. 1971) is often overlooked in broader discussions of New Music in Europe, and is little discussed outside of his native Austria. When his music is discussed, it is usually in relation to its fragile textures and extreme quietness. However, the notion of time in its various guises also plays a key role in Lang's work, and it is the scale and structure rather than volume and timbre of his music that this article probes. This paper looks at the construction and configuration of time in Lang's music utilising the writings of Henri Bergson, and specifically the notion of duration as a mediation of time and consciousness. I suggest that Lang's work is predicated on the fragile balancing of conscious and ‘clock’ time, creating structures that destabilise our perception of temporality in his work.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 71 , Issue 281 , July 2017 , pp. 53 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Hepburn, Allan, Enchanted Objects: Visual Art in Contemporary Fiction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Evan Johnson (n.d.), Performance note for Hyphen, www.evanjohnson.info/solo-instrument-voice/.

3 Johnson (n.d.), Performance note for Hyphen.

4 Hepburn, Enchanted Objects, p. 135.

5 This article was written before the publication of Gottschalk’s, Jennie Experimental Music Since 1970 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)Google Scholar, which discusses Lang briefly, and makes reference to the manipulation of time in his music (pp. 44–5).

6 Alexander Lloyd Linhardt, ‘Review of Werner Dafeldecker/Klaus Lang Lichtgeschwindigkeit’, Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2523-lichtgeschwindigkeit/.

7 Zachary Woolfe, ‘Techtonics Festival in New York Takes Wing at a Church Setting’, New York Times, 8 May 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/arts/music/review-tectonics-festival-new-york-takes-wing-at-a-church-setting.html?_r=0.

8 Lang is mentioned in Griffiths's, Paul Modern Music and After, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, but only as a precursor to Griffiths's discussion of Beat Furrer.

9 Klaus Lang, Biography (English), http://klang.mur.at/?page_id=119.

10 Bergson, Henri, Matter and Memory, trans Paul, Nancy and Palmer, W. Scott (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970 [1896]). pp. 89–90 Google Scholar.

11 Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 90.

12 Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 91.

13 Deleuze, Gilles, Bergsonism, trans. Habberjam, Barbara and Tomlinson, H. (New York, NY: Zone, 1988 [1966]), p. 51 Google Scholar.

14 Deleuze, Bergsonism, pp. 31–32.

15 The notion of affect is not particular to Bergson and Deleuze. The notion of affect has been drawn upon frequently in recent musicology, especially in relation to the study of noise. See Goodman, Steve, Sonic Wafare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010)Google Scholar and Thompson, Marie, Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (London: Bloomsbury, 2017)Google Scholar for more.

16 Deleuze, Bergsonism, p. 53.

17 Lang, Biography.

18 Music Austria's complete work list for Lang may be found at: http://db.musicaustria.at/node/70026 (accessed 26 July 2016).

19 The colours here refer to the images online. In the print version the cello is represented by a straight hashed line, the viola a dashed line, and the violin a solid line. Online the image is in colour and the cello is represented by a purple line, the viola a green line, and the violin a pink line.

20 The phenomenon of the ‘return trip’ effect has been the subject of debate in the behavioural sciences. See van de Ven, Niels, van Rijswijk, Leon and Roy, Michael, ‘The Return Trip Effect: Why the Return Trip Often Seems to Take Less Time’, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, no. 5 (2011), pp. 827–32, doi: 10.3758/s13423–011–0150–5 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

21 Klaus Lang, Trauermusiken, Edition RZ, 1995 (RZ 4003).

22 The concept of a sonic apparition might be comparable to the phenomenon of the ‘afterimage’, an experiment in which, after focusing on a picture for some time, the eye is tricked into thinking the image remains after it has been removed. For more see Eric Chudler, (n.d.) Afterimages [online test], https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/after.html.

23 François Couture, ‘Review of Trauermusiken’, Allmusic, www.allmusic.com/album/trauermusiken-mw0001320126.