The Hollow of the Heart [2019-20]

solo Paetzold contrabass recorder & ensemble [25’]

[cb recorder (solo); b.flute; b.clarinet; steel-stringed guitar; piano; percussion; acoustic objects; violin; cello]

commissioned by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation for Anna Petrini and the Curious Chamber Players

performance history

2/8/2020 - Anna Petrini & Curious Chamber Players. ECLAT Festival. Stuttgart, Germany.

program note

In every piece I write, I try to find a soundworld that feels as if it has been coaxed out of the instrument itself. I search instruments for sounds that feel elemental, as if the instrument were designed around these sonic qualities, rather than the sonic qualities being a byproduct of the instrument’s construction. In The Hollow of the Heart, the Paetzold contrabass recorder draws the entirety of the ensemble into itself and bends every instrument’s sound towards its own; it is the beating heart through which all other instruments flow. This is the second piece (of three) in my ongoing collaboration with Anna Petrini (the first being The Chain of the Spine for the trio Faint Noise), and together we have charted out a soundworld from within the instrument. At times, the sounds draw our ears to the hollowness of the instrument’s interior (white noise, breath, pale frequencies); other times, the sounds feel as if they burrow themselves within that sunken place (warm, round tones, multiphonics beating against themselves). Every sound that comes from the musicians of Curious Chamber Players is in reference to one of these two poles. I don’t hear the ensemble instruments as projecting or amplifying the sound of the Paetzold; I hear them trying to dwell or nest within it. It is a hollow, inside of which sounds are sleeping, speaking, beating, breathing...