Library of MaerzMusik

For the opening of the festival, the loudspeaker orchestra Acousmonium, designed by François Bayle, will feature works by Beatriz Ferreyra, Eve Aboulkheir and Iannis Xenakis, among others. The Library of MaerzMusik brings together sound artists, composers and music theorists to discuss the technical possibilities and the significance of the loudspeaker orchestra for the presentation of acousmatic music.

Over the past two years, Ensemble Musikfabrik has dedicated itself towards significant efforts in researching the works of Lucia Dlugoszewski. This pursuit has involved multiple visits to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., aimed at gathering, analysing, understanding and advancing the ensemble’s approach to Dlugoszewski’s compositions, philosophy and ingeniously crafted instruments. In this listening session, Dirk Rothbrust delves into Lucia Dlugoszewski’s innovative percussive instruments, providing insights into their musicality, sonority and performance. The instruments under exploration encompass wooden and glass ladder harps, glass tangent rattles and others, meticulously reconstructed by Thomas Meixner for this project. Meixner discusses the unique challenges of reconstructing these instruments, drawing upon fragmented information, construction references and sound cues. The session illuminates the ensemble’s enduring commitment to the realms of reconstructive and imaginative music.

Where does the process of interpreting Lucia Dlugoszewski’s music begin? What does it mean to revive her scores and how does her music remain relevant to today’s audiences? While the archive plays a significant role in the context of Dlugoszewski’s legacy, the extent of her collected manuscripts and writings may seem overwhelming. Why does accessing Dlugoszewski’s scores remain a challenge and a mystery to current and future interpreters of her work? In their conversation, Christine Chapman, Lilianna Krych, Agnese Toniutti and Monika Żyła share their reflections and experiences with Dlugoszewski’s scores retrieved from the archive from the perspective of musicians, researchers and writers.

Marco Blaauw meets with composers Mazyar Kashian, Elena Rykova and Bethan Morgan-Williams to delve into the progress of developing their commissioned works by MaerzMusik and Ensemble Musikfabrik. Some works that appear at the festival respond to the music and philosophy of Dlugoszewski in different ways. Still, rather than focusing on a direct line of ideas relating to Dlugoszewski’s legacy, the discussion will consider various aesthetical perspectives on music and beyond.

In this conversation, choreographers Katherine Duke, Edivaldo Ernesto and dancer Louis Kavouras discuss various perspectives on dance, movement and shed light on Dlugoszewski’s relation to composing works for dance and her long lived relation to Erick Hawkins.

In a continuation of their ongoing dialogic cycle about Lucia Dlugoszewski’s practice and scores, Kate Doyle and Agnese Toniutti perform a dialogue about a dialogue – that is, they consider anew (and in new forms) the possibilities that the “problems” of Dlugoszewski’s radical and innovative scores and notational structures offer. The musical score can be a site for dynamic exchange between performance and analysis, a place for conversation about material and meaning. As is typical in conversation, conundrums or disagreements generate new ideas and new forms. Problems become possibilities. A circularity emerges as Doyle and Toniutti perform, evaluate and question every solution. With attention to this process and its iterations, they engage with various schemes to understand parts of the score as a reader and a performer. Limitation and potential, intention and invention, the exploration and learning – a need for constant humility provided – is explored.

As the festival is nearing its end, this talk focuses on interpersonal perspectives on Dlugoszewski’s work. The processes and procedures of this two-year-long research will be shared by the musicians and curators, who have found various ways to navigate through the labyrinthine catalogue of art that Dlugoszewski has created. The conversation aims to illuminate the listening conditions and situations of 20th-century music and contemporary music today as well as how a (re-)writing of music history can not only be attained by a perspective coming from the score but also coming from performance and all its implications of liveness.

Lucia Dlugoszewski created a body of music that was uniquely steeped in poetry, aesthetics, philosophy and abstraction. To gain an overview of the topographical soundscape that Dlugoszewski once explored, one must first understand the individual threads. With personal story and philosophical citation, this lecture reveals the aesthetics that underscore and support Dlugoszewski’s artistic process.

Drawing on the archival research in the “Lucia Dlugoszewski Papers” at the Library of Congress, curator, composer and researcher Dustin Hurt explores Dlugoszewski’s creative practice and, in particular, her utilisation of “maps”: pictorial illustrations that amalgamate dance notation, iconographic symbols, graphic analysis and literary references. These maps – which Dlugoszewski eloquently described as “maps of leaping chance and memory swipes” – serve as dynamic blueprints, guiding her creative exploration of timbre, dynamics and formal structures. Using vivid examples and imagery sourced from the archives, this talk will unravel the intricate layers of Dlugoszewski’s musical cartography.

When asked what the title “Music for Left Ear in a Small Room” means, Lucia Dlugoszewski answered: “It means, remember our ears are on either side of the head. It means, especially, to be listened to by very close and beloved friends.”