JOHANNSSON, JOHANN — Virthulegu Forsetar

“Wenn es überhaupt etwas gibt, das den Fächer der Touch-Releases zusammenhält, dann ist es vielleicht das Wort ‘sublim’, mit all den Nebenbedeutungen, die dabei mitschwingen. Zu den Gipfeln einer Ästhetik des Erhabenen wurde man dabei von den dröhnenden Sonnengongs Phill Niblocks getragen. Und ähnlich ins Vertikale zielt nun Virthulegu forsetar (TO:64, CD + DVD-Audio mit 96 khz 24 bit surround & stereo mixes), nach Englabörn die zweite Produktion des Isländers JOHANN JOHANNSSON für das Londoner Label mit dem blauen Touch. Die 4-sätzige Komposition wurde 2003 uraufgeführt in der Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik durch das Caput Ensemble unter Leitung von Gudni Franzson zusammen mit Skuli Sverrison an Bass und Electronics, Matthias M.D. Hemstock an Glocken, Glockenspiel und Electronics, Hördür Bragason und Gudmundur Sigurdsson an Orgeln und dem Komponisten selbst an Piano und Electronics. Eine mit 4 Trompeten, 4 Posaunen & Tuba besetzte Brasssection spielte dabei über einem dunklen Continuosummton ein einfaches Mollthema, das sich immer wieder und immer langsamer mit immer längeren Pausen dazwischen in immer wieder leicht variierten Klangfärbungen wiederholt, bis es aus der Stille, in die es immer wieder versinkt, nicht mehr auftaucht. Johannsson, bekannt geworden mit dem Apparat Organ Quartet (Apparat Organ Quartet, Thule, 2002), adaptiert dabei die Klangbilder und den herzausreißenden XXL-Blues von Mahlers Largos, etwa des 4. Satzes der Dritten Symphonie, und die legisch-dämmrigen Passagen von Wagner. Er selbst nennt als Bilder und Gedanken, die ihm durch den Kopf gingen als er das Stück schrieb, „an obsession with entropy, Pynchon’s „The Crying of Lot 49’, postal horns, cybernetics, small birds, heat, space, energy... Nietzsche’s Ewige Wiederkehr, Moebius strips.’ Ohne Worte scheinen die Hörner Zeilen aus Zarathustras Mitternachtslied zu seufzen: „Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht! Die Welt ist tief! Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht! Tief ist ihr Weh!...’ Der mürbe Schwebeton überbrückt die Abgründe des Realen mit jenem ästhetischen Zauber, der einzig als Antwort taugt auf die alte Frage, warum überhaupt etwas ist und nicht vielmehr nichts. Ohne Musik - wie diese! - wäre das Leben ein Irrtum. Virthulegu forsetar scheint dabei jeder rhetorische Impetus abzugehen. Die minimalistischen Metamorphosen atmen ein und aus wie etwas, das ganz für sich ist. Wenn Johannsson schreibt: „The central point is perhaps how a very simple thing can change by going through a very simple process - something about change and transformation and the inevitability of chaos’, dann klingt das wie befallen von Schopenhauer’scher Fatalität und Ciorans Gedankendämmerung. Aber ist die Entropie auch unvermeidlich, der Weg dahin ist variabel. Und Johannssons Melos dazu so süß und weh, dass es immerzu mit einem NOCHEINMAL lockt.“[BAD ALCHEMY 45]

“Jóhann Jóhannsson is one of the most active participants in the new Icelandic music scene. He has one of the founders of Kitchen Motors, the art organization/think-tank/record label which specializes in instigating collaborations, promoting concerts and exhibitions, performances, chamber operas, producing films, books and radio shows based on the ideals of experimentation, collaboration and the search for new art forms. Jóhann has produced and written music with artists as diverse as Marc Almond ("Stranger Things" album), Barry Adamson and Pan Sonic, The Hafler Trio, Magga Stina and many others. He has also written music for the theatre, documentaries and soundtrack music for 3 feature films.....
'Virthulegu forsetar' contains one hour-long piece for 11 brass players, percussion, electronics, organs and piano. It's presented as an ordinary stereo CD and as a DVD-Audio with a high resolution 5.1 surround mix. The piece had its live debut in Hallgrimskirkja, a large church in Reykjavik and the city's towering edifice, and was named "the most memorable musical event of 2003" in Iceland's leading newspaper. The piece has Englabörn's quiet, elegiac beauty, but abandons the brevity of the first album's exquisite miniatures in favor of an extended form that reveals a long, slow process. A simple theme played by the brass section is repeated throughout the entire piece using different voicings and instrumentation. As the piece goes on, the tempo slows down, until it is extremely slow. Around the middle of the piece, the tempo starts to speed up again, until it reaches the original tempo. Space and the sense of place were very important in the performance and recording of the piece. Players were positioned both in front and at the back of the church and two organs were used, again, one in front and one at the back. This created a sense of immersion and a sound that is powerful without ever being 'loud'. As the piece is written for a specific location, it made sense to record it live in this same space and attempt to 're-create' it for the listener with 5.1 surround technology. This was like creating an audio 'mold' or 'cast' of the inner sonic architecture of the building. In this way, the music engages in a dialogue with the space it's performed in and the recording process becomes as much a documentation of a place as a documentation of music.
Johann writes: "During the first live performance of the piece, the church ceiling was filled with blue helium balloons which were timed to fall extremely slowly to the ground during the performance and scatter among the audience. To our pleasant surprise, the balloons reacted with the sound, falling with greater frequency as the volume increased. During the performance the light slowly changed through the church windows as the sun went down. The concert was fairly late, ending at around midnight and it being a bright, cloudless spring evening, the combination of all these physical and natural processes made for quite a memorable moment". "I had a number of things going through my mind during the writing of the piece, some of them being an obsession with entropy, Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", postal horns, cybernetics, small birds, heat, space, energy, "singularities", Nietzsche's Eternal recurrence, Moebius strips. I'm absolutely not interested in imposing any one 'meaning' on the piece, but all these things were flying around somewhere in my head. A casual listener might categorize the piece as ambient or meditative, but I think this is really wrong - for me it's much more about chaos and tension rather than harmony. I go through many different emotions listening to the piece, veering from intense joy to acute sadness. The central point is perhaps how a very simple thing can change by going through a very simple process - something about change and transformation and the inevitability of chaos." [press release]