Remembering Japan
a cycle of five 16-channel electroacoustic compositions

year: 2016-2022
duration: 60:12 min.

The cycle reflects my impressions of a three-month stay in Japan in 2014. I traveled to very different areas of the country, improvised with musicians, and took countless recordings of daily life, ceremonies, nature, and culture. Each of the five parts, which can also be performed individually, treats the sound material in a specific way.
Part 1 : immersion – switches quickly between sound scenes and superimposes temporally and spatially separate events in a high-contrast theater of sounds.
Part 2 : expansion – works with large spaces and distances. But the peaceful ambiance gets disturbed intermittently.
Part 3 : abstraction – transforms sounds into more extreme forms, creating rhythmic layers and textures that rapidly follow one another. The very energetic part functions as a formal climax for the cycle.
Part 4 : suspension – is the calm place of the work: as if dreaming through a veil, we navigate between musical impressions of Japanese culture.
Part 5 : recollection – condenses specific sound memories of my journey and phrases of the previous parts into a short, concluding section. The ambiguity of some moments creates new qualities and relationships which are supposed to point beyond the end of the work.
The composition clearly communicates with Japanese culture while reflecting at the same time my own compositional preoccupations: polyphony, density, space, and memory as structuring and formal principles.

immersion 9:48 min
expansion 13:28 min
abstraction 10:37 min
suspension 19:39 min
recollection 6:27 min

The five parts are dedicated to the following friends who have accompanied and supported my work for years: Flo Menezes, Takeyoshi Mori, Jonty Harrison, Annette Vande Gorne, and Karl Lubomirski.

https://electrocd.com/en/album/6390/hans-tutschku/remembering-japan