Music for the Eyes


'Dennis Russell Davies Dennis Russell Davies

Communication in today’s world has achieved a level of almost unbelievable sophistication and technical advancement, yet people the world over live in ever increasing isolation in societies where specialization has become the operating principle. While the continuing advance of digital technology in literally every aspect of modern live represents, unfortunately, the negative consequences of overspecialization and a resultant general feeling of isolation, clearly the marvellous progress in the digital arts and sciences brings hope of a generous and humane solution to some of an isolated society’s most difficult problems.

Several years ago, Gerfried Stocker and I discussed intensely the problems that serious concert music was facing in a world that had become increasingly visually oriented, and was being simultaneously overwhelmed with brutal noise levels in everyday life as well as indiscriminate and primitive usage of (over) amplification. Increasingly, concert music was being dominated by “specialists” in old music, new music, baroque music and renaissance music, with an ever-increasing gap between today’s composers and the general concert public. We both agreed that the traditional acoustic instruments of the modern symphony orchestra were relevant and potentially stimulating for today’s listeners of all ages, and we decided to combine the resources of the Ars Electronica’s visual technology, the musical expertise of the Bruckner Orchester Linz, and the composers whose music in recent years has found its expression through the medium of the modern (acoustical) symphony orchestra but is still struggling to find a wider audience. Since 2003 the Ars Electronica Festival and the Bruckner Orchester Linz have presented works by Edgar Varese, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Sobotnik, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Györgi Ligeti, Péter Eötvös in conjunction and simultaneously with digital creations by visual artists.

All of the new video works were created under the influence of already existing, but decidedly contemporary music, and were designed to be performed simultaneously with a live symphonic performance. In nearly every case, I had the strong impression that the music and the visual performance could continue to exist independently of each other, but that together they blended to create a form that effectively communicated sophisticated new sounds and images to a receptive and new audience.

This continues to be our goal, and to this end Gerfried Stocker and I have selected for the Ars Electronica Festival 2006 what we feel to be a dynamic and interesting constellation of composers and visual artists. On Sunday, September 3, Ars Electronica, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, the Brucknerhaus, and the Lentos Museum will present in live performances over several hours and in different venues the results of this collaboration.

I had the good fortune of enjoying the friendship and working closely with John Cage from the early 1970s until his death in 1992. Similar to other musicians and music lovers, the way I thought about and listened to music and the sounds of the environments in which I lived was profoundly changed by his music and ideas. Because he was a courageous pioneer, he was often a lonely figure as a composer, but his work brought musicians and performers of all kinds together to create unexpected and often spectacular events. His scores could be visually captivating, and I am confident he would have been comfortable with our “visualization” project, and probably a contributor to this form as well. His openness to new ideas and generous acceptance of all forms of serious art is our guiding spirit in this Festival.

Charles Amirkhanian’s work as a composer has been in the realm of sound pieces, with words, syllables, and vocal sounds forming the acoustical substance of his creations. But in addition he is one of the most informed and informative authorities on performed serious music world wide, and has been a tremendous help, for me and for other conductors and performers, in finding interesting, often unjustly neglected, music to play.

My first contact with Ludger Brümmer was in the 1980s in Cologne when I conducted a new orchestral work of his at a Cologne Radio Festival for young composers. He has since become an influential figure in German music and is currently music director for ZKM in Karlsruhe. He has conceived and developed a new form for live performance with pianist Maki Namekawa, composing music and creating visual elements to be performed together (Le Temps du Miroir). On September 3 Ars Electronica will present a new work by the same collaborators. Philippe Manoury has had a long association with Pierre Boulez and the IRCAM at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. I conducted the premier of his opera K…. at the Opera Bastille in Paris in 2001, and since then we collaborated on a revival of K…. as well as other works for symphony orchestra. His special interest has included extending the acoustic possibilities of the symphony orchestra through digital and acoustical means, and for our festival the use of visual elements with live symphonic performance is a natural development of his work.