Raum für Notizen
Raum für Notizen is a multi-sensory, collaborative music work by London composer and recorder player Otto Hashmi, written as a response to the project of the same name by Berlin artist Karø Goldt. It is scored for Bass Recorder with Electronics and Tape.
Written for the space of the Wachturm Schlesischer Busch, an ex-GDR watchtower on the site of the former Berlin wall, it was premiered as the culminating event of Goldt’s 6-week artist residency there with The Watch Berlin on Friday 15th July 2022.
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The work explores the concept of regaining trust, both between the former East and West Germanies – where social and economic disparities are still visible more than 30 years since reunification – and the role that trust plays within our daily lives and in our technology driven, post-modern society. The tower becomes an immersive space filled with notes submitted by the audience, from which the music is born as a dialogue with these titular notes, actively blurring the boundaries between the performer, composer, and audience.
Audience members are invited to move between rooms in the tower and hear the performance from different perspectives and with elements digitally altered and re-prioritised. On the top floor, where guards would have only decades ago been on alert for potential defectors, listeners can observe the live, unaffected recorder performance – an arrangement that intentionally creates a power imbalance across the building. Each movement begins with a spoken quotation from anonymously submitted notes about what regaining trust means to someone personally.
Below is a summary of each movement of the work, and an overview of its corresponding room in the building, along with audio examples from the perspective of a listener in each room. Textures, melodic intrigue, contrasting climatic moments and moments of sonic singularity are spread throughout the building, giving the audience an element of control as to how they wish to perceive the performance.
All audio examples on this page are taken from the premiere performance in Berlin on Friday 15th July 2022.
Please contact me for a press pack, for further information, or to request a score.
RAUM FÜR NOTIZEN
I. Raum
II. Zelle
III. Zwischen
IV. Himmel
(total length 28:04)
I - Raum
The first movement ‘Raum’ is for the ground floor main space, and functions as an overture to the work.
Upon entry on the ground floor, the sound is pitch-shifted down by an octave, with bass frequencies giving a grounding, being at the literal base of the building. This is the first element that is heard by the audience as they enter the building, with the digital enhancements in other rooms further adding to this as the building is explored.
Musically this movement focuses on three sets of improvisational harmonic guidelines, each of descending importance. As the movement progresses, these are cycled through eventually leading to a final climactic point as a mixolydian rooted cluster-chord is digitally frozen; beginning with arpeggiac movement that devolves into partially stepwise motion, mimicking and paying homage to the natural harmonic series before returning slowly to monophony.
II - Zelle
The second movement ‘Zelle’ is for the holding cell on the ground floor.
In the cell, one finds the performance is heavily affected at points by rich, crushing distortion and saturation, creating an overwhelmingly immersive harsh noise wall that envelopes the listener. If or when this wall of sound becomes too intense, the listener only has to remove headphones to be regrounded in the lighter, bass rich tone of the Raum. At other points, such as in the second movement, ring modulation and pitch shifting is used to create a sound-world that feels jarring and alien to the listener. The intended effect is an overwhelming, suffocating contrast to the subdued sounds in the room outside the cell.
This movement references the ‘Gongs and Chimes’ number station run by the East German government under the GDR. This looped figure becomes progressively more warped as its pitch and speed decrease, and the live recorder references this decaying sound with equal parts exhaustion and parody.
III - Zwischen
The third movement ‘Zwischen’ is for the first floor.
This room sits as a sort of purgatory in the building with hints of natural light emanating from above and artificial light coming up from the ground floor below. In the Zwischen (first floor) sound is more heavily affected with reverbs enhancing certain resonant frequencies and creating new detail from these, mimicking the shimmering rays of light that bounce off the walls, contrasting the darkness of the overall space.
This movement is exclusively for the percussive sounds of closed holes and key sounds on the bass recorder. The harmonic enhancements of the reverb in this room create detail from the percussive sounds, whilst click track (heard only by the performer) and delay are used to build a sense of rhythm, which ebbs in and fades away through the movement. The impression of this sound world is starkly contrasted on the top floor where only the live acoustic performance is present, and sounds almost inaudible.
IV - Himmel
The final movement ‘Himmel’ is written for the top floor, which feels open due to the abundance of natural light.
On this floor there is no amplification, one simply hears the sound as it is direct from the Recorder. Some bleed can be heard from the floors below, and there is a general sense of the sound escaping out of the windows into the space and skies around and above the tower, as it mixes with ambient sounds of the outside world. Birds and trees in the wind can be heard alongside the sounds of people in Schlesischer Busch. It serves as a connection between the dark context of the tower and the intensity of the work, with the present day and real world outside.
Performance in this final movement moves between blowing on the window of the instrument to create an airy, almost whistled effect - with some additional melody played traditionally through the mouthpiece. The movement begins with a sustained interval of a major second, creating a consonant and yet harmonically ambiguous grounding in contrast to the clear sense of root note in the first movement. Further on, melodies heard in the first movement are referenced with intentionally less focus on the harmony and a sense of tonal ambiguity. The movement and work ends with monophonic improvisation played through the window of the instrument; it is almost impossible for the audience to discern individual notes as the sound blends into its surroundings, and symbolically escapes from the tower becoming one with the outside world.