Pierrot Lumière
A two-part scenic concert for 3x3 musicians, 2 singers, 1 performer, 1 conductor, 1 sound director, 1 light technician and 21 lightbulbs. Part 1 comprises Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire, op. 21 (1912) in a theatrical staging by Recha la Dous. Part 2 takes up the original’s themes moves and transfers them to the Here and Now, placing Schönberg’s music in direct confrontation with contemporary compositions and improvisations.
The theatrical focus of both parts is the connection between light and music. As equivalent mediums, both elements are set in direct relation to each other. Light is transformed into music, music transformed into light, both reciprocally receiving new stimuli. |
In addition to Schönberg’s score for five musicians and one speaking singer, a score was written for 1 light technician and 21 lightbulbs that all fill in and embellish Schönberg’s original musical material. This configuration is completed by the addition of 1 performer who brings the two separate parts of the program together. Part 2 takes up this approach and further develops it via compositions by Gordon Kampe, Yig Wang, Gerald Golka and improvisations by the ensemble.
“I certainly go, I feel, against a new expression. Here the sounds become almost a brutally immediate expression of sensual and spiritual movement. Almost as if they were directly transmitted.”
Arnold Schönberg (trans. Caleb Salgado)
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