Waldelweiser und so weiter

Waldelweiser und so weiter is a 6-CD boxset of music in, around or near that of the composers in the Wandelweiser collective. It was published by Another Timbre in 2012 and included the following pieces, on which I perform:

> Michael Pisao ‘fields have ears (3b)’ (2010) performed by Angharad Davies (violin), Patrick Farmer (electronics) Sarah Hughes (piano) Daniel Jones (electronics) Dominic Lash (double bass).

> Stefan Thut ‘Many, 1-4 (2009) performed by by Angharad Davies (violin), Bruno Guastalla (cello), Sarah Hughes (piano) Daniel Jones (electronics), Dominic Lash (double bass), Tim Parkinson (piano), David Stent (guitar), Paul Whitty (harmonium)

> Jűrg Frey ‘Time Intent Memory’ (2012) performed by Angharad Davies (violin), Jűrg Frey (clarinet), Sarah Hughes (zither), Kostis Kilymis (electronics), Dominic Lash (double bass), Radu Malfatti (trombone)

> Sam Sfirri ‘little by little’ (2010) performed by Angharad Davies (violin), Bruno Guastalla (cello), Sarah Hughes (piano) Daniel Jones (electronics), Dominic Lash (double bass), Tim Parkinson (piano), David Stent (guitar)

> Anett Németh ‘eine unbedeutende aussage’ (2012) performed by Bruno Guastalla (cello), Sarah Hughes (objects), Dominic Lash (double bass), Simon Reynell (objects), David Stent (objects)

 
Wandelwesier und so weiter translates as ‘Wandelweiser and so on’.  The and so on is important, as this box set doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive anthology of Wandelweiser music, that function being already fulfilled by the catalogue of the Wandelweiser label itself.(1)  While offering new realisations of pieces by the most well-known composers in the Wandelweiser collective, Wandelweiser und so weiter focuses also and in particular on the edges of what is already a marginal music:  lesser known composers at or beyond the fringes of the collective, other musicians whose work has co-existed with or retrospectively prefigured something of what Wandelweiser is about, and – above all – the confluence of Wandelweiser music with the soundworld of textural improvisation through realisations by a number of musicians who are better known as improvisers, but who in recent years have been drawn to – and have in turn affected the development of - Wandelweiser music.

So Wandelweiser und so weiter presents a reading of Wandelweiser, one perspective on a music that is in flux, moving and changing in subtle ways, as if caught in the pull and ebb of a littoral sea.  

sound [noun]    -  a narrow passage of water between the mainland and an island,

                              or between two larger bodies of water

I used to envisage contemporary music as a complex river system, flowing in a myriad of channels that divide and reunite, sometimes combining with tributaries, sometimes disappearing underground, or flowing into stagnant backwaters.  But with Wandelweiser I prefer the image of a sound: a body of water that can be more or less defined by what surrounds it, but which doesn’t move in a single, linear direction; which appears almost static, but is constantly shifting and reconfiguring itself.  I especially like the idea of Wandelweiser as a ‘passage of water…between two larger bodies of water’, something without precisely defined boundaries that takes from and gives back to the expanses around it in a process of ongoing exchange. (Liner Notes by Simon Reynell, producer - September 2012)