Später Schall

Später Schall is a spatial composition for the market square in Osnabrück. The church and town hall on the square embody two worlds. Sound starting points are a fountain at the pointed end of the triangular square, the crowd and traffic noises, the sound of bells and the reverberant interior acoustics of the church. 

Scepticism about the task of writing music for a random audience gave way to enthusiasm for designing a scenario for such a space, exploiting the sound delays due to the great distances, in which different groups of musicians are assigned different functions and the conditions of the square can be used compositionally.

The acoustic, historical and everyday circumstances of the square are transferred into a geometric-acoustic virtuality in various degrees of intensity. Realistic podium music, involving a normal display of the musicians and a soloist wandering among the audience as a representative of a "touchable", vain music, is contrasted with virtual situations in which, for example, the reverberant atmosphere of the church interior is superimposed on all instrumental sounds. Shifts in direction, rotations of the instrumental sounds over the loudspeakers create a strong irritation of the physical spatial conditions.

The aim is, of course, to re-experience this space by introducing new realities (virtualities). Thus the height of the church tower is made conscious through acoustic fall processes, through the arrangement of the loudspeakers and the control of the volume distributions through computer processes. The church organ sounds are only audible from outside, fluctuating in volume by opening and closing the church doors according to the score.

Unfortunately, the performance had to be cancelled due to a storm.