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RE-WRITING HISTORY: BERNHARD LANG'S MONADOLOGIE SERIES (2007–PRESENT)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Christine Dysers
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Abstract

The oeuvre of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang (b. 1957) is based upon extreme musical repetition. In his Monadologie series (2007-present), short samples of pre-existing music form the starting point for a variety of automatically generated looping and transformation processes. The overwriting of pre-existing music results in the creation of meta-compositions that radically alter the listeners' understanding of the original piece.

Sketching a general overview of the composer's aesthetic beliefs and the compositional strategies originating from them, this article focuses on Lang's Monadologie series. It aims to clarify the relationships between the individual pieces of the series, to analyse the musical techniques used to reinterpret pre-existing scores within a contemporary setting and, finally, to interpret the implications that arise from that procedure. The 2009 Monadologie VII: …for Arnold… functions as a historico-analytical case study, from which a deeper insight into the series' hermeneutics can be gained.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 69 , Issue 271 , January 2015 , pp. 36 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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