Concert Clemens and young composers

NOTE: Very limited amount of space – come early!

This concert presents Concert Clemens in cooperation with conductor students and composition students at RAMA, performing new works by the composers Niklas Brandenhoff, Matthew Grouse, Sebastian Brix and Yanina Aspenkjær.

Two of the compositions are described as follows:

Niklas Brandenhoff:  “2 madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo if he had been lobotomized”
“One of the characteristics of Gesualdo and the culture of Gesualdo worship is that it’s connected to ideas of expression. The idea of expression is explicitly connected to notions of male aggression. Similarly, the idea of expression is associated with the notion of distortion. At the same time, we all know, that there is a degree of propinquity between the appearence of distortion produced 1. by expressive intend and 2. by incompetence.”
(Art & Language – Biennale of Louvain 2001, Lecture at university KU Leuven)

By directly connecting chromatic alterations with the violence of the murders on Gesualdos wife Donna Maria d’Avalos and her lover and then recontextualizing it with the prefrontal lobotomy as a metaphor for the act of removing all accidentals from the madrigals, this project attempts to question the more or less fetishistic equation of the expressive chromaticism of Gesualdo’s music with his double homicide.

Matthew Grouse: Add a public comment …
Add a public comment… follows virtual protagonist Quinn as they attempt to integrate with and ultimately join the choir. The text of the work is mined exclusively from YouTube comments left on live-performance videos of choirs, singer/songwriter covers, and bands.