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Frey, Jurg

L'ame Est Sans Retenue I [5 CDs]

Frey, Jurg: L'ame Est Sans Retenue I [5 CDs] (erstwhile)

A massive work from composer Jurg Frey focused on the dynamic relationship between sound and silence, and how it can affect our perception of the silence in a frame of space and time, using environmental sounds of field recordings and silence to create a massive work over six hours, modifying pitch, rhythm, dynamics, texture, and overtone, here properly released on 5 CDs.
 

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Personnel:



Jurg Frey-composer, performer


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Label: erstwhile
Catalog ID: ErstClass 002-5
Squidco Product Code: 25225

Format: 5 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2017
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded in Berlin, Germany between October and December , 1997, by Jurg Frey.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Swiss composer Jurg Frey's six hour long electronic tape piece L'ame Est Sans Retenue I was recorded and assembled in 1997/98 and is now being released for the first time. It is the longest piece Frey has ever composed in his over 40 year career.

In this piece, Frey utilized the sounds of field recordings he made in Berlin in 1997 as the source materials, alternately inserted between long stretches of silence. Frey was particularly focusing around that time on how the dynamic relation between sound and silence can affect our perception of the silence in a frame of space and time. By using the environmental sounds of field recordings and silence as materials, which was an unusual method of composing music at that time, Frey created a subtle but captivating flow over the six hours in which nearly imperceptible pitches, rhythms, dynamics, textures, overtone - all emanating from the natural environment - are faintly consonant with each other. "It's about how 'normal', 'regular' things are transformed - by the work of composing, by decisions, by intuition, by the ear - to an art work." (Jurg Frey)

The title "L'ame Est Sans Retenue I" is a quotation of a single, isolated sentence from French poet and writer Edmond Jabès's book Désir d'un commencement, Angoisse d'une seule fin (Desire for a Beginning, Dread of One Single End). The simple clear-cut structure and slightly enigmatic, ambiguous air of Frey's l'âme est sans retenue I echo with the world of Jabès's book, in which a large portion of white space (silence) is distinctly present between blocks of sentences and a list of evocative keywords create an introspective, silent, distant atmosphere."-erstwhile records


Artist Biographies

"Jürg Frey was born in 1953 in Aarau, Switzerland. Following his musical education at the Concervatoire de Musique de Genève, he turned to a career as a clarinetist, but his activities as composer soon came to the foreground. Frey developed his own language as a composer and sound artist with the creation of wide, quiet sound spaces. His work is marked by an elementary non-extravagence of sound, a sensibilty for the qualities of the material, and precision of compositional approach. His compositions sometimes bypass instrumentation and duration altogether and touch on aspects of sound art. He has worked with compositional series, as well as with language and text. Some of these activities appear in small editions or as artist's books as individual items and small editions (Edition Howeg, Zurich; weiss kunstbewegung, Berlin; complice, Berlin). His music and recordings are published by Edition Wandelweiser. Frey has been invited to workshops as visiting composer and for composer portraits at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the Universität Dortmund and several times at Northwestern University and CalArts. Some of the other places his work has developed are the concerts at the Kunstraum Düsseldorf, the Wandelweiser-in-Residence-Veranstaltungen in Vienna, the Ny music concerts in Boras (Sweden), the cooperation with Cologne pianist John McAlpine, the Bozzini Quartet (Montréal), QO-2 (Bruxelles), Die Maulwerker, incidental music, as well as the regular stays in Berlin (where during the last years many of his compositions were premiered). Frey is a member of the Wandelweiser Komponisten Ensemble which has presented concerts for more than 15 years in Europe, North America and Japan. Frey also organizes the concert series moments musicaux aarau as a forum for contemporary music."

-Other Minds (http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Frey.shtml)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



CD1



1. Untitled 73:44

CD2



1. Untitled 73:43

CD3



1. Untitled 73:53

CD4



1. Untitled 73:53

CD5



1. Untitled 64:53

Related Categories of Interest:


Compositional Forms
Electro-Acoustic
Field Recordings
Electroacoustic Composition
Solo Artist Recordings
New in Compositional Music

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erstwhile.


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