DEGEM was founded on 26 April 1991 as “DecimE”, the German section of the Confédération Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique (CIME), and is a member of the Deutscher Musikrat and the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik. It organises conferences, courses and concerts, fosters international exchange and publishes writings and recordings. The selection of works and the production of this CD were in the hands of Andre Bartetzki.
Friedhelm H. Hartmann’s “Sirenes” (1995) belongs to his seven-part cycle “Portraits of a woman”, which is based almost entirely on a few samples of a female voice, speaking, screaming, murmuring, laughing. A three-part web of voices strays into siren-like singing with seductive harmonies of fifths; the electronic frame forms a sober counterpole, until the initial studio feedback turns into the familiar sound of a siren at the end. For Ralf R. Ollertz’ “Unacrès” (1996) the booklet reproduces a poem by Toula Limnaios. Jutta Ravenna’s “LeiseLaute” (1994) is an interactive sound object: extremely quiet, high-frequency insect sounds are hidden in a tree trunk, and a sensor converts the visitors’ distance into sound; as one approaches, the sounds grow denser, only to fall silent just before the object is touched.
The tape of Helmut Zapf’s “Canto del Aria” (1996) consists exclusively of oboe sounds, filtered, delayed, ring-modulated and reverberated with Csound; the arc leads from mere breath noise via delicate melodic phrases to an aggressive fortissimo and back. Zapf wrote the piece for Kai Rapsch, whose part relies on the player’s shared responsibility for the sound. Harry-Ed Roland composed “Prayer Meeting: EO” (1995), “essentially orchestrated”, in the autumn of 1995 at EMS in Stockholm, almost entirely from altered samples of his own analogue recordings; the piece is about the ceaseless stripping away of layers and is dedicated to the memory of the dancer Keith Glancy.
Martin Supper developed the concept of “DH2” (1985) at a summer course given by Iannis Xenakis in Delphi; the title refers to the mathematician David Hilbert. Since individual parameters are variable, versions between 12 and 18 minutes long can arise; the realisation recorded in 1988 at the Berlin studio CUE was selected for the World Music Days 1990 in Oslo and shortened for this CD. In “Changes” (1996), created at the studio of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin as part of the VORTEX project, Günter Heinz combined sounds from Berlin with those of his trombone. Gerhard Behles prefaces “Silicea” (1994) with lines from a “Materia Medica” on overstimulated senses. For “Südlich von Alexandreia” (1995) Lutz Glandien recorded sounds of sistrum and rabab and strange voices; the Berlin clarinettist Jürgen Kupke plays to the tape.