String Quartet No. 1 “Gran Torso”, Helmut Lachenmann

by tacet

As I noted last week, the Articulate Silences team has moved to a new home on counter-melody. I’ll reblog new counter-melody posts here on Articulate Silences for a while, to make sure none of you are missing out. Today we published a new post on Helmut Lachenmann’s String Quartet No. 1 “Gran Torso”. Here’s a snippet of what we had to say about it:

Imagine stripping all the words out of spoken language, leaving behind only the liminal sounds existing between and around those neatly delimited symbols: clipped breaths forcing air in and out of lungs, the moist sounds of saliva between tongue and teeth – all those uncanny by-products of the mechanical, fleshy actuality of the production of meaning. Now do the same to the rarefied language of the string quartet – with its hallowed tradition stretching back to Mozart and Haydn – and you’ll begin to approximate Gran Torso’s barren soundworld.

Head over to counter-melody to read the full post – happy listening!