“Melody is the centre of Sidney Corbett’s sonic universe,” writes Hanno Ehrler in the booklet. Corbett studied music and philosophy in San Diego and at Yale University and from 1985 to 1988 with György Ligeti in Hamburg. Coming from rock music, he encountered the classical and romantic repertoire only as a student, without any awe, as one facet among many, like the music of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. He develops his lines from the single tone and largely avoids timbral tricks and avant-garde effects: the sound seems traditional, the music is not.
“Die Stimmen der Wände” (1993) was commissioned by the city of Mönchengladbach as a joint work with the visual artist Brigitte Maria Zarm, whose six objects made of dove feathers, metal wire and quills were presented together with the music at the Ensemblia Festival in 1993. The starting point was the proportions of the Romanesque minster and the neumes of the 11th-century Gladbach Missal. The six movements for flute, bass clarinet/alto saxophone, trombone, electric guitar, violin and cello allude to medieval forms: “Symphoniae” develops a monophonic, plainchant-like melody, “Porta” is a ballata, “Amplificat” a perpetuum mobile in a constant crescendo. “Pellere Noxia Mundi” quotes the inscription on the minster’s bell, destroyed in the Second World War, “Responsorium” is devoted to ornamentation, and in “Ultimus” a lonely solo violin circles above a slowly descending chorale.
Corbett wrote “Bleeding in Babylon” in 2003 for the Industrieviertelfestival in Schwechat near Vienna, after a week right next to the local oil refinery, while the newspapers reported on the war of conquest in the land of the Babylonian Captivity. For this recording with Seth Josel, John Corbett (bass clarinet) and Michael Tiepold (double bass) he revised the piece in 2004. “que hora es in paradiso” (2002) for banjo and bass clarinet was written for a banjo project by Josel and John Corbett; the clarinet takes over the sustained notes the banjo lacks, and the title mixes Spanish, Italian and Latin like a pilgrim asking the way. The theme of the “variations in memoriam Edison Denisov” (1998) for classical guitar came to Corbett in a dream after Denisov’s death; it combines the note letters of Denisov’s name with Corbett’s initials.
Corbett calls “Exits” (2005) for electric guitar and ensemble an explicitly autobiographical work. He wrote it for Seth Josel, commissioned by Deutschlandfunk for a portrait concert at the Forum Neuer Musik 2005. “Self portrait” revisits structures from earlier pieces such as the chamber opera “X UND Y”, the “Tarantella” is a dance of death, “Malibu” remembers the composer Mark Osborn, killed in an accident in 2002, and “Desert” a night drive through the desert on the way to Las Vegas. Josel, born in New York in 1961, was a member of musikFabrik from 1991 to 2000. “Die Stimmen der Wände” and “Exits” were recorded live at the portrait concert on 4 March 2005 in the Sendesaal of Deutschlandfunk, the other works at the same venue in early March 2005.