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I need a player who is able to dance with his instrument, to be one with it'
Hindemith Prize for his compositional work to date. Having had a piece for viola (Sexton A.) premiered by Tabea Zimmermann at the 1997 Berlin Festival, when I met Oehring he was working on his second string quartet - destined for the Kronos Quartet, themselves distinguished interpreters of Jimi Hendrix.
Oehring describes himself as a 'documentary composer' , a teller of tales; he wants to depict the realities of today's world through the medium of music just as others make documentary films or, for that matter, protest songs. 'After all, Mozart's operas were also socially engaged for their time,' he points out, , 'showing and denouning class conflicts, racism, sexism and the like. I am interested in the depiction of extremes: love, hatred, death. What else is there that is worth describing? All operas are concerned with these topics and each of my pieces - even the instrumental ones - is an opera.'
It's a view he shared with another writer, whom he told 'composing doesn't interest me so much': 'My music is blood, it is tears, violence, hate, death and love. But what does my music sound like? Dark, morbid, schizophrenic, sick, broken, yearning, androgynous, nightmarishly realistic ... After almost every piece I think: "That was your last". But as long as the rope holds, I won't go down and the rest, anyway, is just waiting to write.'
'A number of my compositions circle around the death penalty, a subject that has occupied me for a long time,'he tells me. 'I see in it both a residue of racial hatred (most of the people that have been executed in the USA in the last years have been black) and an attempt to make murder 'politically correct' and even aesthetically clean: you no longer have a guillotine, a rope or a firing squad but a lethal injection.' (Oehring even adopted the phrase Lethal Injection as the title for one of his works). 'Or take the three solo pieces (for guitar, basset horn and vibraphone) that make up Foxfire,'he continues, 'which are intended to describe the three stages induced by a poison injection: you lose consciousness, then stop breathing, then your heart stays still. In most cases there is a story behind the titles of my works and it is necessary for the interpreters to be aware of it. For example, Leuchter and Cayabyab are two men who make a living out of this form of death penalty, the first by manufacturing the poison and the second by supervising the executions.'
None of these pieces includes double bass but the instrument is coming to take a central place in a relatively large part of Oehring's fast-growing oeuvre: 'I have a strong predilection for low pitches; you could chase me out of town with a piccolo flute! I suppose if's because of my parents. Have you heard deaf-mute people "talk"? Their vocal chords are atrophied so that can only emit uncontrolled, deformed sounds at a very low pitch - and those were the first sounds I heard as a small child. I often have string players tune their instruments anything up to a fifth lower, or a timpanist loosening the leather of his, so that they can just about react to the bow or the stick. The instruments thus "speak" in the same uncontrolled way. The double bass and, for that matter, the electric guitar, too, don't interest me just as a bass line but as 'beings' as well. Owing to my having been born into sign language while being able myself to hear, all gestures and movements are for me intimately bound to the ear. Thus the choreographic elements of a piece are very important to me, especially with the double bass which often requires big movements just to get around it. I need a player that is able to dance with his instrument, to be one with it; it happens so often.
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'Losheit brings bass players to the limits of what is possible'
that the movements seem misshapen and awkward; it is not that one shouldn't notice the physical work but it should never get in the way. For that reason I sometimes have a tuned-down electric guitar take the bass line: having six strings and the ability to play chords, I often find it preferable to the double bass which can be inexact or uncontrolled. On the other hand, I like the movements a bass player makes! I would be delighted if a bass player came along with the agility to play my electric guitar parts!'
Two pieces with the common title Strychnin (both dating from 1993) inhabit the same sound world as the compositions inspired by the death penalty: they are intended to descibe the effects of the poison upon the body. The first is scored for trumpet, trombone, piano, viola and double bass while Strychnin II - still awaiting its first performance - unites double bass with trombone and harp. A gentleman of Leuchter and Cayabyab's ilk is the subject of Dienel, a 1996 piece for bassoon, double bass and harpsichord. The work includes an ad lib. tape prepared by Oehring using the sound track of television reports on concentration camps and is part of a group of compositions sharing the title kurz im Müll gestochert ['scraping for a moment in the dirt' ].
Another extreme situation is depicted in Rapid Eye Morement, part of a cycle entitled Coma. 'The title is a medical term,' Oehring explains, 'and has to do with research into the realms of sleep and dreams. In the few minutes of each night in which a person is really fast asleep, their eyelids move extremely quickly and it is also the moment in which the most significant dreams come to you. 1 have written two versions of this piece, the first in 1990 for clarinet, double bass and percussion which I revised in 1992 ina version for 15 instruments (the bass included).'
Losheit ['Looseness'] for double bass duo was written in 1992 for the Berlin musicians Martin Schaal and Markus Rex. Schaal is principal bass at the Komische Oper and Rex holds the same position with the Berliner Sinfonie- Orchester. Since then it has been played regularly and Oehring recalls two British performances, one in London and another in Manchester. The title of the piece [a significant portion of which is reprinted in this issue of Double Bassist] is poeticphilosophical term about which Oehring is unwilling to talk at length. He feels that no description in words can give an idea of this, for him very precise stadium somewhere between life and death: 'lt is much more easily described in music. This time there is, exceptionally, no story to go with it.'
Turning to the score, it's clear there is hardly a note that is intended to be played 'normally'; the players are asked to bow behind the bridge, to use an excessive amount of bow pressure, to strike the instrument in a number of ways and to otherwise produce a number of unseemly noises. Is there method in't?
'l let my ear guide me,' Oehring explains, 'that's my only method. Many of these effects originated during rehearsals, just trying things out with the players, sometimes even by chance. Although I mark my scores very precisely, I am always ready to change something if it doesn't sound the way I had imagined. The dramaturgy of a piece is born out of my work with the players. Losheit brings them to the limits of what is possible - each part is written in two systems and requires huge movements just to get round the notes. This has, of course, to do with sign language - as has the fact that the players are often required to do a number of different things at once, like playing a run arco, while at the same time plucking an open string and knocking on the instrument. Sign language being the only language that takes place in space as well as in time, it allows you to express different things simultaneously. In this it is nearer to music than any "sounding" language.
1994/5 Guest of the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome. Oehring is awarded the Italian Orpheus Prize the following year for Dokumentation 1. 1997 Hindemith Prlze (Plön) for composition works to date.
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About the Music
AS CARLOS MARIA SOLARE POINTS OUT IN HIS FASCINATING feature (p.34), the double bass is coming to take a central place in a large part of composer Helmut Oehring's rapidly expanding catalogue. Oehring puts his strong predilection for low pitches down to having deaf-mute parents: 'Have you heard deaf-mute people "talk"? Their vocal chords are atrophied so they can only emit uncontrolled, deformed sounds at a very low pitch - and those were the first sounds I heard as a small child.'
Owing to his having been born into sign language while being able himself to hear, all gestures and movements are 'intimately bound' to Oehring's sense of sound. lt goes some way to explaining the complexities of Losheit ('Looseness'), his essay for double bass duo. Losheit was written in 1992 for Markus Rex and Martin Schaal, who comprise the Kontrabass-Duo Berlin and gave the premiere of the entire work - some 15 minutes in duration - at the city's Schauspielhaus Musikclub later that year. We reproduce the middle section of the work here, courtesy of publishers Bote & Bock (a Boosey & Hawkes company), along with the key to the graphic symbols that appear in the work.
At first glance Losheit may look intimidating, with each part laid out over both bass and treble clefs. But the uniqueness of Oehring's musical language - ranging from sardonic wit to almost despairing blackness - makes the challenge of conquering this piece all the more rewarding. And unlike most of his other works, Oehring insists there's no story behind Losheit - the performers are free to bring their own deeply personal interpretation to this highly unusual work.
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