Lachenmann's Silent Voices (and the Speechless Echoes of Nono and Stockhausen)

Abstract

In order to assess Helmut Lachenmann's characterization of (his) music as an ‘existential experience’ this article focuses on a specific aspect of many of his compositions: stretches of near-silence and minimized musical activity such as reduced dynamics and gestures which contrasts the surrounding material. I argue that in the case of his early vocal compositions Consolation I and II (1967 and 1968) these ‘meta-musical fermatas’ relate to a key portion of each work's text in order to encourage self-reflection on the part of the listener. My analyses reveal the influence of Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen, particularly in terms of word-setting and of the works’ spiritual and political messages. I further trace the changes undertaken in these compositions and in Lachenmann's commentaries for them over the following decade. I suggest these changes relate to political events in Germany occurring between 1968 and 1977 which also led to the conception of Lachenmann's ‘music with images’, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern.