by [PH]
Interpretation is futile …
The requiem isn’t a remix in the canonical way. The point with it is not to rephrase the original work in order to add to its meaning. Neither is it to produce extra content or to extend the original work’s duration. It is not a way to produce a more fashionable or enjoyable version of Mozart’s masterpiece. Anyway, its not about the work and neither it is about Mozart. Its all a matter of medium, media and era.
I personally can’t write music score like “real musicians” do. Its not that i don’t know how or I’m not able to … its just that there is no real point for me in writing music this way. Neither can i use traditional (analogical) instrument since they don’t fit my needs either.
I need to work on complex sounds and to be as close as possible to the semantic essence of sound to make it somehow usable in my work. I don’t sample, I use, I exploit, I rework, I develop, I play Mozart played by Bohm. I use the requiem as the soundtrack to a new musical performance. The original work is a starting point and could have given birth to various different designs. Actually, the design is the only thing that matters. Yet the requiem in itself sounds with its really identity in my work and is identifiable in all of my work but reshaped in a way that makes it obvious for the listener to endeavor it as a real new aural experience
The Requiem is used as a word in a sentence, as a pronoun. Depending on the other words and meaning of the sentence, its position and the implication meant by the usage of this word may be different, more or less literal, accentuated or derelict. The verb is the score and the score is a program, an electronic program. Nopthing is automated, only the way the source can be played is controled by the coded score.
I work with a computer from electronic sounds only. They are two main ways of acquiring such sounds. Computer assisted synthesis or recording. Ripping audio from CD is the same as recording one’s voice trough a microphone… its a recording in a numeric format. The sounds i use in my work are not used simply as sounds but rather as instruments, characters. That’s where the big difference lies. I’m not a deejay, I’m not a remix artist, I’m kind of a computer assisted instrumentalist. Where some add & merge sounds from various sources to make a genuine work relying on the “memory” of those sounds in a positive way. I tends to hack into the identity of such sounds and works in order to generate a neutral work. Independent from the original.
Considering Mozart’s requiem as a musical instrument is obvious to me. Each section of the work being considered as a tonality and a general “mode” of playing lets me, the instrumentalist, play on those modes and give the audience the opportunity to hear a performance of Mozart’s requiem. Not a performance based on the score but one based on the recording that have been made of it & spoken in a foreign language trough a computer assisted interface. In the end, its all a question of what is “listening” to music ? I’m kind of an active listener!
About the Requiem-Remix
