ECSTASY / MUSHROOMS

What do moulting insects and sprawling tree fungi have in common? They follow a clear process, both ecstatic and fragile. «Eleusis» by Stefan Wirth: similar to tree mycelia, which can form an extensive fungal network, the orchestra spreads throughout the space. The Swiss composer, who teaches in Lucerne, speaks of it as a «ritual act».

The explicit objective is the induction of a trance-like state. By consuming «high doses of musical occurrences», the same feeling of happiness is to be achieved as in the Mysteries of Eleusis of the ancient Greeks – without the use of drugs. In «Moult», Clara Iannotta draws inspiration from the moulting process of spiders. The old body shell is shed and the new, moulted body emerges from the «spirit or shadow of its own form», as it were. The Italian artist speaks of a «double temporality» in which the past leaves virtually physical traces in the present.

In Iannotta's work, the orchestra becomes an animal that is shedding its old skin and, with it, the past which simultaneously maintains its presence. This sonic shedding process takes place as ecstatically as the lucid sound colour transformations in Beat Furrer's «Phaos» from 2006 or the spectralistic, spherical music by Gérard Grisey. The title of the work «Phaos» means brightness or light.

Furrer creates this impression with high, hovering sounds and spectra rich in overtones. They emerge from multidimensional sound phenomena that emerge almost in slow motion. A similar approach is adopted by Grisey in «Le Temps et l'Écume» from 1989. In this «time foam», the temporal «levels of deceleration and acceleration» increasingly overlap. «Time and space expand and compress».