Track By Track: Moritz von Oswald – Silencio

Infinito:

Infinito is a free improvisation piece that started without notes at the end of the choir recordings in free experimentation. With the uncanny energy of the human voice, often, as with synthesizers, just one note sustained over a long period of time is enough. So the singers were asked to sing very long, free, sustained notes. This recording was the starting point to take a recording that essentially has no beginning and no end, put it into an electronic context, arrange it and interpret it musically. This is a good example of a piece that, unlike the other pieces, came practically out of nowhere.

Silencio

‘Silencio’ is the intro piece to the record, which was created relatively late and also found inspiration in the electronic improvisations around ‘Infinito’. The central motif is a melody that I have always carried with me. The realization of the project Silencio, since the first interest of Tresor, took over 2 years until it took shape and could take place on this scale. Then, through the recordings, a whole new dynamic and energy emerged, which led to a lot of new inspiration. Since this melody is a very soothing moment for me, it came to me while sifting through the chorus and electronics tracks, I knew that this melody had to become a part of Silencio.

Librarsi
This piece was also created after the choir recordings, one of the few pieces where the choir isn‘t used at all. In the research process of forming and finalizing the electronic context for the choir pieces, Librarsi (=floating) emerged from a pure synthesizer improvisation. The dialogue here takes place between the individual elements of the synthesizer, so it was clear that Librarsi stands on its own.

Colpo
Colpo is a massive, very layered piece. Jarkko Riihimäki has done a great job in the transcription of this piece and has managed the realization together with the choir and the recording admirably. It was clear from the beginning that ‘Colpo’ would require 32 voices, so here the 16 voices of the choir had to be layered twice. A piece that took on a new shape and gained a lot through the transcription and work with the choir, and which benefited greatly from the many years of joint work with Jarkko Riihimäki on orchestral projects and his understanding of my music.

Volta & Volta (Version)
I always tried to avoid rhythms when composing ‘Silencio’. Volta, on the other hand, is a slightly rhythmic piece, with staccato as a central element. One thing I often like to do myself is to play the same note over and over again, which always takes me very deep. Not a composition in that sense. In the versions, such as Volta (Version), a partly new electronic context was worked out, while the original versions focus more radically on the choral recordings. In this case, for example, a percussion on bottles was used, which was slightly processed after.

Research + Idea Silencio
How did the idea for the album Silencio come about and how did the research happen?

I’m a big opera fan, and in some operas there are choirs that are very fascinating.
In general, choirs are a kind of musical art that I have always admired.
So I had the idea to look into composing a piece for a choir and recreating it on electronic instruments.

If sampling methods, sample voices are good, you can quickly imagine something there. In this case, everything immediately sounded so promising that I wanted to dive deeper into the subject. Once started, further pieces practically wrote themselves. Theoretical research didn’t come into play too much, rather instinct, experimentation and research into sound and musical structures.

I then started to build a set on the modular synthesizer, which resulted in the first backing track. The first element was a rhythmic fragment, which can be heard at the beginning of ‘Luminoso’. This was then built upon with sample voices, and the piece was basically already there.

From then on, everything went by itself, as is usually the case with music: once you start somewhere, it’s hard to stop again.

Silencio is out now on Tresor Records. Order here.