As for the story itself, it was entitled 'The Dancing Fool.' Like so many stories it was about a tragic failure to communicate. Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on earth to explain how wars could be prevented and cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tapdancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had touched down no sooner than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house farting and tapdancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golf club.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
A scenic and choreographic concert
Plays! is a project by clarinetist Benjamin Dieltjens in which he and WALPURGIS aim to further explore the theatrical possibilities of music/musician.
The driving force behind this acoustic and spatial experiment is the experiment itself. The music does not follow an extra-musical narrative and does not exist because of any pretended content; it is a game that gives itself meaning. She, like hopscotch games and countdown rhymes, is abstract: you can only hear or 'play' her.
PROGRAM
Paul Craenen, Antwerp Encounter, creation
Steve Reich, New York Counterpoint (1985)
Serge Verstockt, A la Recherche du Temps, creation
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Der Kleine Harlekin (1976)
Starting point for Craenen and Verstockt's compositions was the fact of 'counterpoint' in the New York Counterpoint by Steve Reich. This composition for clarinet and bass clarinet features 11 musical lines: 10 of them were recorded in advance, the 11th is played live. The piece consists of three parts (fast, slow and fast respectively) played in one piece. Due to the polyphony and shifts in tempo, the rhythmic patterns intertwine, causing the listener to lose his grip on the music and also on time.
A la Recherche du Temps, Serge Verstockt's new composition, follows the same principle and confronts the spectator both aurally and visually with the same work over and over again, but each time recorded from a different time dimension (accelerated, slowed down, real time).
In the creation of Paul Craenen, Antwerp Encounter, the 'shifts' within the music are caused by the spatial displacement of a mobile element.
Also in Der Kleine Harlekin by Stockhausen incorporates the fact of counterpoint, albeit in the interaction between the composition for clarinet on the one hand and the choreographic score on the other.
