On December 20, 2021 Klangforum Wien played at the concert “December Nights by Sviatoslav Richter” in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.u. The ensemble presented a reflective program on the subject of musical geometry in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries and played, among other things, the premiere of “Риза” – a work by Klaus Lang, which he composed especially for the concert in the Pushkin Museum. In the interview on December 20, 2021, Marina Syomina from Radio Orpheus spoke to Klaus Lang about his composition.

Marina Syomina:
Klaus, tell us how music came into your life and why you chose this path and this profession.

Klaus Lang:
Unlike many of my colleagues, I don’t come from a family of musicians: my mother worked as a secretary, my father was a teacher. But my family placed great value on education and considered music to be one of its most important parts. Since my childhood I was surrounded by art and it interested me: I read a lot and was fascinated by music. When I was twelve or thirteen I knew I wanted to be a musician. This was no coincidence, but I was influenced by role models and books, as is often the case with musicians. It was my own conscious decision. I learned to play the piano and was also very interested in music.

Marina Syomina:
In one of your interviews you say that you see music as a free acoustic object that is valuable in itself, and that music is time that has become audible. What role does the composer play in this case?

Klaus Lang:
From the 19th century to the present, music has been universally perceived as a form of self-expression. It should reflect the author’s own feelings and emotions. If we look into the past and turn to the Baroque, for example, we can see that music at that time belonged to the sphere of rhetoric, that is, it was a kind of means of communication. Music could convey joy or love, but composers and performers did not express their own feelings in it. In my work I go even further into the past – to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (I’m talking about Western culture) when there was no concept of rhetoric. Just as an artist creates paintings and a sculptor creates statues to be placed in space and viewed, I create complete musical objects without translating my emotions into them. In this case, music is not a means of communication. My compositions can evoke feelings in the listener. They can please them and inspire them, but I’m not addressing the audience directly.

Marina Syomina:
Is the personality of the author present here or is it left out?

Klaus Lang:
Let me give you another example from music history. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach created a famous work – Fantasia, in which he expressed his deepest personal feelings. His father, Johann Sebastian Bach, on the other hand, wrote in the tradition of rhetoric without revealing his own feelings in his music. His works are subject to the strict rules of counterpoint. Nevertheless, they evoke a certain emotionality in us and the style of an individual author can undoubtedly be understood in his music.

Marina Syomina:
Let’s turn to today’s concert at the Pushkin Museum. Please tell us which work is being played today and how it came about.

Klaus Lang:
The concert is called “The Geometry of Counterpoint”. In it we turn to classical linear counterpoint. For this concert I have been asked to write a work that relates closely to the contrapuntal tradition. In search of an idea, I delved deep into the history of music and finally turned my attention to the beginning of the 15th century and the work of Ockeghem, the most prominent exponent of the Franco-Flemish school of counterpoint. He is the forerunner of the Italian composer Palestrina, who is considered the greatest counterpoint player alongside Bach. When writing my work, I took into account the fact that the concert will be held in Moscow and turned to Russian art. Russian icons have always fascinated me. Ockeghem composed a great deal of spiritual music in his artistic work and icons are also works of spiritual art. I combined this in my piece.
I especially like the “Rizas”. These are gilded or silvered metal covers that complement and decorate the lower color layer of the icons. At the same time, the image itself on the icon may be much older than the gold mount overlying it. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that due to the cover, only small fragments of the icon itself are visible – face, arms, legs. Figuratively, I took Ockeghem’s work as an icon and painted the ‘top layer’ for it. First we see a magnificently sparkling ‘layer’ and then gradually appear darker elements of the ‘icon’ itself – the basis of Ockeghem’s musical work. This is the concept of my piece.

Marina Syomina:
And what’s the name of the work?

Klaus Lang:
„Риза“ (Riza)

Marina Syomina:
Tonight a contemporary music ensemble called Klangforum Wien will perform. I know you work very closely together. Please tell us about this team and your work with the ensemble.

Klaus Lang:
The music group Klangforum Wien was founded in Vienna around thirty years ago by Beat Furrer, who conducts tonight’s concert. It is one of the best ensembles in the world performing modern classical music. It’s called an “ensemble” but it’s actually ten or fifteen soloists performing a piece together. I used to play a lot with this great group as an organist. It is therefore a great pleasure and honor for me that we are together again today for the first time after quite a long break. By the way, the name “Klangforum” speaks for itself: one of the strengths of the ensemble is the high sound quality as such, which is particularly important to me personally as a composer.

Marina Syomina:
How important is it for a composer to perform his own work in your opinion?

Klaus Lang:
Traditionally, composers have performed their own music. And the process of the total splitting of musicians into composers and performers that took place in the 20th century and that we are witnessing now, is really strange. I aspire to perform my own music. I like to live it myself, experience it, understand it. It’s important to me to have this opportunity. I don’t want to be a composer who just writes notes. I want to be a composer who can play his own compositions.

Marina Syomina:
Tell us briefly about your impressions of Moscow. Do you like coming here? How do you like the atmosphere here?

Klaus Lang:
I often come to Russia. For example, in June this year I was in St. Petersburg at the music festival ReMusik.org. I know many colleagues there – both composers and performers. Regarding the Russian musical spirit, I see that the culture is preserved and present in people’s lives and that music is not only a means of entertainment but also an integral part of the culture. And that’s very important.

Marina Syomina:
Klaus, I would like to ask you about the composition that we are about to hear. Tell us about this work and the history of its creation.

Klaus Lang:
I wrote this work in the Beethoven year, commissioned by the Cologne Philharmonic. As we know, Beethoven was practically deaf in the later years of his life. He communicated through diaries in which he wrote sentences and showed them to his interlocutors. He wrote them down with a pencil. For composers, hearing is the central element of creativity. In my work I wanted to reflect the phenomenon that contact with the world of music and the ability to communicate depend on what the composer writes and not on what he/she hears. Essentially it all boils down to a thin line – a pencil line in a journal. The work is structured in such a way that at the beginning we only hear a “thin line” played by the viola. In the end, the musical fabric is also pulled together in the “thin line” of the violin. And right in the middle, a whole world of sound unfolds in its inexhaustible variety. Actually “Linea mundi” is translated as “line of the world”. It can be said that this is a thin line leading into the world, or even that it is the limit of this world.

Text and Interview: Radio Orpheus, Marina Syomina
Translated from Russian
To the original interview on Radio Orpheus