In recent years the use of speech has been a central compositional concern. In … erinnerung… (… memento…) the recorded poem forms the starting point for acousmatic transformations. Apart from this text there is a second group of sources, which include bells and tam-tams. I used granular synthesis to cut the sounds into small pieces and played them back polyphonically to create dense sound textures. The resulting sonic intensity is a musical translation of the central phrase of the poem Yo os lo aseguro… (I assure you…) by Antonio Bueno Tubía: “I / assure you / the prison is there / I recall it like a lash to the face.”

[xii-99]

… erinnerung… was realized in 1996 in the studio of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin, Germany) and first performed in its original 4-channel version on 26 November 1996 during a concert at the Liszt School of Music (Weimar, Germany).

Premiere

• November 26, 1996, Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar: Concert, Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, Weimar (Thüringen, Germany)