Event

With his Chants for seven female singers, completed in 1973, the Canadian composer Claude Vivier (1948–83) reached the first high point of his brief but brilliant career. His strict Catholic upbringing and his earlier studies in composition under Gottfried Michael Koenig and Karlheinz Stockhausen come together here for the first time to form a distinctive personal style: In Vivier’s work, bold avant-garde, religious contemplation, and unbridled emotionality intertwine. The text of the piece is a fusion of liturgical and self-composed texts, interwoven with syllables seemingly devoid of semantic meaning and revolving around the fear of death.

To visualize this piece, Ekkehard Windrich uses a two-channel software oscilloscope. Through various display modes and manipulations of the input signal, moving sculptures emerge that sometimes appear abstract, but often also very organic.