"Her music in general moves back and forth between almost impalpable delicacy and extreme violence"

Woodwind player Carl Rosman is a member of Cologne-based contemporary music group musikFabrik, who will be performing Rebecca Saunders’ Chroma, cinnabar and a visible trace at hcmf// 2010. He tells hcmf// about the demands and rewards of playing Saunders’ compositions:

“I first met Rebecca in 2001 when I was playing in a concert with Ensemble Modern as a guest and albescere was on the programme. I'd heard some of her pieces before but only in passing and that was the first time I'd been able to immerse myself properly. The first time I played her music was in the premiere of insideout, a dance project (I think it was called a 'choreographic installation') with Rebecca, musikFabrik and Sasha Waltz's company, which we've played over 100 times.

“We did the first working sessions in early 2003 and found out pretty quickly that we're both interested in the same things on the clarinet. Her music in general moves back and forth between almost impalpable delicacy and extreme violence and both of those are things a clarinet does very well! In particular, we started looking at a particular area of the clarinet's potential, quiet multiphonics with just two notes usually quite close together which have a very characteristic tonal quality and an even more characteristic microtonal harmony. That appeared on the A clarinet in insideout and since then also in stirrings still, and we're working on a bass clarinet solo at the moment which explores similar sounds.

“musikFabrik have performed pretty much everything of Rebecca’s that we could make fit our setup: insideout, vermilion, cinnabar (which has just come out on CD), a visible trace, albescere, disclosure, into the blue, underside of green, quartet, stirrings still and some things without clarinet, of course, including trumpet, double bass and piano solo works as well as dichroic 17.

“I'm very interested by how Rebecca’s music is always blurring the boundaries between sounds, as well as between sound and silence. Her music is full of ‘dal niente’ and ‘al niente’ directions (crescendo from nothing, diminuendo to nothing) which if they're strictly observed – and the clarinet can probably do this better than any other instrument – mean that there are hardly any hard edges in the music: not only sounds but instruments are constantly blurring into each other. At the same time Rebecca is constantly reworking and reusing certain instrumental gestures, which means that both as performer and listener (and since there are so many gaps in her music it's simply not possible to be the former without being the latter as well) you're constantly confronted with familiar characters in an unfamiliar landscape. Often she won't join gestures or even isolated sounds up in a single instrumental part but will let melodies come together from the interactions between the players.

“Like a lot of composers she makes regular reference to Beckett and there's a clear link to me between some of her textures and the manner in which Beckett will often let characters seemingly carry out simultaneous monologues, even with certain situations or attitudes seeming to carry across from one play to another, without actually interacting in an obviously 'theatrical' sense – perhaps it's a formalised environment in a sense but the result, with both Beckett and Rebecca, has tremendous raw impact for exactly that reason.

“As I mentioned, Rebecca is very fond of sounds which appear from or disappear into nothing. The clarinet may be one of the instruments best suited to such a technique but that doesn't mean it's easy, especially when the sounds are so often combined with techniques which destabilise normal sound production – breathy sounds, fluttertongue and the like – and that was an enormous challenge to me when I started playing her music. Interpretatively for me the word would be 'stimulus' rather than 'challenge': I very much enjoy going where her pieces take me! I did have a few moments of worry when we were playing disclosure recently. The clarinet and bass clarinet sounds are really extremely violent, both in themselves and in the fact that they emerge so abruptly from what is often a very quiet background. I often needed reassurance that I wasn't taking the violence of the part too far.

“The main part of my playing in Chroma is in a trio with cello and electric guitar which also appears (in a different form) in insideout so I had already played it over a hundred times. The context is also similar in insideout: there are various other fragments of music which are overlaid but which aren't synchronised on a beat-by-beat basis: the fragments start at a given time (coordinated by stopwatch or in insideout by a central clock) but exactly how they unfold, for example whether climactic gestures are simultaneous or slightly offset, isn't fixed. That affects the way we shape the given gestures, so again there's a lot of listening – and even more in the other music I have in Chroma, which is a duet with another clarinettist I sometimes can't see!

“In Hannover we played the piece in the Gallery Building of the Herrenhäuser Gardens. I felt a little as though we were Baroque servants scurrying back and forth, or perhaps unusually lively sculptures. Maybe in Huddersfield Town Hall we'll feel like civil servants. Either way it fits with the nature of how the piece fits together –  the formalised environment which forms a kind of background to most of Rebecca's music, I feel – and either way the nature of the tasks we're actually carrying out means there's no danger of us feeling too much like functionaries.”

musikFabrik perform Rebecca Saunders’ Chroma on Saturday 27 November and cinnabar and a visible trace on Sunday 28 November. Click here to buy tickets for the concerts.

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