Lang, B: The Anatomy of Disaster
Arditti Quartet
Bernhard Lang takes extracts, or cells, from Haydn's 'The Seven Last Words of Christ' and enters these cells into a self-developed computer programme.
"The present string quartet, my third one, belongs to the series of 'Monadologien'. They are all united through the method of how the material is worked, in an approach comparable to the experimental films by Raphael Montañez Ortíz and Martin Arnold using 'found footage'.
Monadologien II and III came from Richard Strauss; Monadologie V, for piano, from Haydn's 'Seven last Words…'; Monadologie VI is a Gregorian Chant, Monadologie VII Arnold Schoenberg's '2.Kammersinfonie'; Monadologie X Mozart's 'Alla Turca'; and Monadologie XI Webern's 'Symphonie op. 21'.
In Monadologie IX, again to Haydn's different versions of 'The Seven last Words…', the order of the movements is identical to the original. A short sample from the original work gives rise to the following overall course:
1 Introduzione
2 Sonata I: Pater, dimitte illis; non enim sciunt, quid faciunt
3 Sonata II: Amen dico tibi: hodie mecum eris in paradiso
4 Sonata III: Mulier, ecce filius tuus, et tu, ecce mater tua !
5 Sonata IV: Eli, Eli, lama asabthani?
6 Sonata V : sitio
7 Sonata VI: Consumatus est
8 Sonata VII: Pater in tuas manas commendo spiritum meum
9 Il Terremoto
All movements circle around so-called catastrophic episodes, where the evolving process comes to a standstill and its progress is blocked in "dead repetitions" (Gilles Deleuze), like a stuck record or a defective DVD. An important source of inspiration for the Monadologien and therefore also for the quartet was Stephen Wolfram's 'A New Kind of Science', a book, I consider to be a new study of composition." Bernhard Lang
In 2014 the Arditti String Quartet celebrates its 40th anniversary. Winter&Winter will release another album: Gifts & Greetings: Ardittis' 40th Anniversary based on a production on Saturday, May 10, 2014 in Witten, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, with the Arditti String Quartet and guests Uri Caine (piano), Brice Pauset (harpsichord) and with new compositions by Mark Andre, Hans Abrahamsen, Harrison Birtwistle, Uri Caine, Brian Ferneyhough, Toshio Hosokawa, György Kurtág, Liza Lim, Hilda Paredes, Brice Pauset, Wolfgang Rihm, Marco Stroppa, Jennifer Walshe.
