for choir (20 voices)
Short Documentation (original duration 31 min)

World Premiere 12. Mai 2018 Ballhaus Ost Berlin

Vocal white noise sounds become a static sound, if the sound stream is very even and the mouth is in the same position when breathing in or out. Different mouth positions produce correspondingly different timbres: A wide open mouth position covers a wide, rich frequency spectrum, a narrow mouth position focuses the sound. Although the International Phonetic Alphabet can be used to assign sounds to vocal and frictious mouth positions, the association with speech does not arise due to the even breathing and the effect of the standing sound. The vocal sound is rather perceived instrumentally. An influence by the aesthetics of electronic music cannot be denied, although no electronics are used, not even microphones. Analogous to Barnett Newman's ‘color fields’, ‘sound quality (klangfarben) fields’ emerge. The inclusion of space in depth and width makes the sound sculptural.

composed and conducted by Christian Kesten
Choir: Zoé Alibert, Dorothea Braun, Audrey Chen, Fernanda Farah, María Ferrara, Heather Frasch, Annie Gårlid, Katia Guedes, Ariane Jeßulat, Henrik Kairies, Zoe Knights, Alexey Kokhanov, Olga Kozmanidze, Rebecca Lane, Renata Sachs, Heike Schmidt, Hanna Schoerken, Ela Spalding, Tilmann Walzer, Steffi Weismann

Technical Director: Björn Stegmann
Light design: Fabian Eichner
Sound recording: Kassian Troyer
Sound assistance: Eric Wong
Sound mastering: Annette Krebs
Camera: Carlos Bustamante, Isabell Spengler, Boriana Pandova
Video edit: Steffi Weismann

A project of the Maulwerker, funded by the Initiative Neue Musik Berlin e.V. and the Musikfonds e.V. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.