Deceleration to a supposed floating standstill.
Alma Peterson | Mitgründerin
Time horizons & project status
2018
Idea development, musical sketches and first meetings with Hannah Ewald (choir director, artistic director)
2019
Contact with the Notabene Chamber Choir and its choirmaster Christoph Huldi. Performance of two CHOIR SPACE experiments with the Notabene Chamber Choir. Completion of the composition. Regular concept and working meetings in Hamburg and Leipzig with Hannah Ewald and Axel Schaffran (choir director, arranger) to create the score and voice leading. Definition of the composition of the choir.
2020
Further working meetings in Hamburg to finalise the score. Completion of the rough score and voice direction. Project dossier, budgeting and financing concept drawn up, production of the Mood film. Deepening of contact with the Notabene Chamber Choir, then pausing of the project because of Covid-19.
Project paused due to Covid-19. The concept / dossier / budget has been completed.
2021
Contacting choirs, sponsors, network partners, performance venues.
2024…
CHOIR SPACE VISION
Fields of work that otherwise hardly touch each other combine to create an extraordinary project: sound design and sound art meets choral design and movement quality.
T I M E - A choir in slow motion
CHOIR SPACE is a large space of human vocal sound in which time seems to stand still. Free of melody, words and rhythm, a calm, floating vocal space is created that takes the listener on a 50-minute journey.
This is made possible by a new musical approach to the aspect of time: in the extraordinarily long harmonies, which transform themselves hardly noticeably, the fleetingness typical of music seems to be suspended. The result is an almost tangible sound, comparable to a walk-through film still, which subtly continues to resonate.
The slowness of the musical movement is unique and opens up a new listening experience in which the listener's perception changes and deepens - as if through a magnifying glass, further musical and spatial dimensions can be discovered. Heard through the magnifying glass of time, the multi-layered harmonies with overtone spectra allow additional timbres, movements and supposed melodic progressions to emerge in the listener's ear: Subtle and iridescent, like a sonic fatamorgana.
CHOIR SPACE is a timeless and lively composition full of power, tranquillity, colour and magic. It invites listeners to slow down their sense of time and perception and discover previously hidden details and depths.
S P A C E - The sound of voices forms to an auditory architecture
Auditory architecture is an artistic-scientific field concerned with the exploration and design of sound environments. These can be architectural or urban spaces that are designed acoustically - such as city sound - or, as composer and sound designer Peter Philippe Weiss suggests, vice versa: that the audible shapes itself into immaterial, imaginative architecture. The latter is the aspect explored in CHOIR SPACE: architecture emerges from sound in the listener's mind - as imaginative in different sizes and shapes.
Large spaces, such as a church, a grotto or a concert hall have a unique sound aesthetic. Reverberation creates an open, calm mood and gives even the smallest sounds and noises more time, space and thus meaning. If you walk through the nave, bay windows, arches, niches and winding side rooms of a cathedral, its spatial effects change.
CHOIR SPACE takes this space-sound as its model and translates it into a choral composition that takes the listener on a space-sound journey through an imaginative cathedral: just like the oriels and arches of the building, the choral sound opens up, condenses, expands and transforms, becoming a cathedral of voices.
M E D I T A T I O N - A place of retreat and rest
"Those who are always on the move and are afraid of not being fast enough have no possibility of gaining distance and from there cannot arrive at truly new insights or options for action." Olaf Georg Klein, Time as the Art of Living
For centuries, people from all over the world have used meditation (Latin meditatio = to reflect/ponder) in many different ways. The states of consciousness sought, such as serenity, stillness, emptiness, being in the here-and-now, cognition and spiritual connectedness, vary according to the practice and yet have something in common: the meditator's perception should change so that new inner spaces and perspectives emerge.
In today's world, pausing is more important than ever to maintain an overview in the flood of information and opportunities. Acceleration, competition and constant accessibility lead to restlessness and constant inner and outer noise. Pausing opens up space to perceive needs and feelings, to process experiences and to take a deep breath so that new perspectives and ideas can emerge.
CHOIR SPACE wants to offer a musical-choral response to this need/demand to pause. The meditation-typical reduction of stimuli and events in this work means an omission of melody, rhythm, language and creates space for new inner, as well as acoustic perspectives and spaces. CHOIR SPACE is meant to be a space of possibility that listeners and singers can use as a retreat and quiet space, a space of discovery and experience, a space of strength and choral meditation.
C H O I R - Archaic becomes future
"The voice is old, animal, primary-process, expressive even before the emergence of consciousness. In this sense it is "true", it represents the here and now of the individual". (Quote)
The voice, as a timeless and at the same time always contemporary human instrument, is the basis for CHOIR SPACE. Detached from sung texts, melodies and rhythms, it stands purely and archaically at the centre of the composition: cross-cultural, language-independent and universal.
Since time immemorial, the voice has been used in an original way for rituals to lead into altered states of consciousness. Remnants and continuations of these traditions can be found today in lullabies, fan chants, mantras, Om chants and masses. CHOIR SPACE would like to invite singers and listeners alike to rediscover this original, meditative and ritualistic power in 21st century choral singing.
In terms of social spaces, CHOIR SPACE also wants to tread original and innovative paths at the same time. The starting point for this is our conviction that art and pedagogy mutually inspire, promote and gain strength when they use existing contexts as well as create new ones.
Therefore, beyond notated music, communal, physical and contextual contexts are to be explored, used and expanded. In this way, synergies and perspectives can emerge that put choral music in a new light. In this respect, CHOIR SPACE wants to offer the singers and listeners an archaic and at the same time novel experience and show possibilities of what modern choral work can look like.