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| Editor’s Note |
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The organ is a machine, and Wolfgang Mitterer certainly knows how to operate machines. Quite early on his passion for this complex instrument got hooked up to the manifold possibilities available in a digital studio setting; so, meanwhile the Austrian composer has become both: a much admired contemporary organist with a penchant for Bach, and an internationally sought-after creator of electroacoustic compositions.
In this production he makes do without electronic sound materials, though not without the possibilities of computer editing. The improvised solo pieces were recorded in three different venues using three different organs; then parts of the recordings were combined with each other, and virtual spaces added. Thus the analogous machines in the churches are pushed to the last extreme, and come out of the electronic editing process sounding the way an organ of the 21st century might sound, if the instrument as such hadn’t been left the way it was for centuries.
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| Lineup |
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Organ-recordings made at:
Andreas Putz Orgel, Church of St. Andrä, Lienz (A)
Rieger Orgel, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna (A)
Walter Vonbank Orgel, Church of Piber, Köflach (A)
Played and remixed by Wolfgang Mitterer |
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| About |
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Mitterer studied organ, composition and electroacoustics in Vienna and Stockholm. He is not only one of the Austrian specialists for electronics as well as being equally brilliant on the keyboard and on the slide controls, but is also one of the most innovative composers. His work oscillates between composition and open form. Apart from music for organ and orchestra, operas and a piano concerto he has produced electronic pieces, conceptualized sound installations, and engaged in collective improvisation with diverse groups, developing a language of extremes, tension and complexity. Mitterer lives in Vienna.
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| Artist’s Notes |
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By Wolfgang Mitterer
Playing Techniques Used
Stop playing
Stop playing is the main feature of the pieces. It permits the organist to control the wind pressure and release less air than intended through the pipes. This causes the pipes to shift to a lower pitch or, if there is too little air, to overblow to a higher pitch.
Motor on / off
The bellows lose air / the tones become softer and overblow in turn. Combined with cluster playing, in particular of the foot pedals, a kind of ‘air bebung’ can be generated.
Very fast
Scurrying, slapdash play on the keys, some tones are not fully actuated, side noises are generated.
Beating with the at of the hand on the organ’s case (track 03)
Use of a mouth-blown pipe resembling bird voices (track 04)
Beats on a kettledrum (track 04)
Occasionally the airflow through the pipes becomes audible due to the positioning of several microphones very close to the mouth.
Various Registration Sequences (in chronological order)
01 grand jeu 01
(Church of St. Andrä, Lienz)
off-tune second manual: flute 8' and flute 4'
off-tune first manual: principal 8'
pedal: sub-bass 16'
cut: flutes 2' and flutes 4'
cut: cromorne + flutes gradually going out of tune
cut: 4-foot in the first manual + cromorne 8' in the second manual beats on the wood of the music stand
02 stop playing 01
(Church of Piber, Koflach / St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna / Church of St. Andrä, Lienz)
flutes 8' and 4'
reed in the pedal
overlaid with brief reed chord, sampled and looped
fast runs with 4', 2' and quints sub-bass 16' in the pedal cromorne 8' tone sequence upwards
flute 8' tone sequence downwards
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1CD | Contemporary | Instrumental | Solo | PRIME colors Edition |
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| Recommendation |
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Good news from your mailbox! Mitterer makes music on the subject of ambient in an electronic environment. Two amazing CDs with radical backgrounds.  |
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| What a cheek! So Wolfgang Mitterer can do that, too: and writing a children’s opera really is no picnic, with or without jam. (Or flies.) |
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| In his opera »massacre« Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. |
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