On their first release for Neos in 2013, in new works by Georg Friedrich Haas, Beat Furrer, Manuel Hidalgo, Helmut Oehring, and Markus Hechtle, Aleph Gitarrenquartett demonstrated a plethora of extended techniques and novel approaches to ensemble playing. They also evinced a penchant for second modern style works that, rather than remaining abstract, address some form of narrative component. After the experimental bounty of the first release, one would think that, especially on fretted instruments, the Aleph might have few playing extensions yet to try. However, on their second CD, four different composers – Nicolaus A. Huber, Alberto Hortigüela, Irene Galindo Quero, and Mathias Spahlinger – amply supply them with a bevy of new techniques. In addition, each of the works on Volume 2 also contains a narrative aspect; some oblique to be sure, but each piece has a story to tell.
The most common reference made to the Orpheus myth is from the portion of his journey to Hades to rescue Eurydice. After being beseeched by his beloved, the bard mistakenly looks backward, breaking the rules of his reclamation and consigning Eurydice to return to the Underworld forever. But the climax of the tale of Orpheus is grislier and perhaps just as heart-wrenching. Repudiating the God Dionysus in favour of his love of music (placing music in an Apollonian opposition to the wine god's reveries), Orpheus is punished by being ripped to shreds by the Maenads. The only parts of him that are left are a disembodied head and his lute. Orpheus continues to sing, floating through the air to Lesbos. It is this violent action that opens Huber's piece Der entkomme Orpheus (2001), depicted by fortissimo snapped pizzicatos that seem to symbolise the Maenads's desecration of Orpheus's instrument. Gently articulated harmonics, florid angularity, and the use of various objects to pluck the strings follow, giving the impression of the dismembered Orpheus having to relearn, and repair, his instrument. The coda of the work is a surprising turn of events; it devolves into periodic thwacks with objects and the aforementioned pizzicatos. Live, one witnesses all four guitarists spitting out chewing gum at the audience, a regurgitative ending to an already visceral experience.
For his piece Die Sprache ist die Strafe (2015), Hortigüela references both the instrument of execution in Kafka's The Trial and a famous line from the Ingeborg Bachmann novel Malina (from which the composition's title is derived). Glissandos, including chordal glissandos, polyrhythmic combinations, juxtapositions of microtonal intervals (achieved through quartet-wide scordatura), and a fair number of pizzicatos of its own typify the piece's language. These are cleverly used to musically depict the winding down and ultimate destruction of Kafka's infernal machine. The fluidity of rhythmic relationships and interwoven playing styles give this piece a darkly comic cast, which is certainly a legitimate reading of The Trial as well. In referencing Bachmann, Hortigüela is expressing his own Apollonian and Dionysian conflict: that between the objectivity of language (in this case, musical means) and the hedonism of personal expression. Based on Die Sprache …, one tends to think that his Dionysian side wins, perhaps eight rounds to four.
Ziffer h Hut (2011) is based on a sci-fi fantasy of Quero's. The idea of the story being that archaeologists from the future find the symbol ‘h’ and interpret it variously as a figure, a letter and a picture of a hat. Instrumentally, this is realized by creating a single ‘string’ out of the four guitars (a stand-in for the story's ‘h’). The idea of an ensemble embodying a single long line is nothing new, but the way that Quero suggests this is most ornate, with rustling percussive sounds, glissandos, altissimo register flurries and microtonal sounds made by the implementations of alternate bridges that turn the guitars into faux-koto hybrids. While the tendency of this piece to have single utterances as opposed to polyphony suggests to Quero the unifying idea of a ‘single’ string, the varied colours and textures contained within Ziffer h Hut would seem to beg the argument of colloquy as a unifying principle instead. Either way, the composition is absolutely fascinating, and Quero's imaginative aesthetic is eminently absorbing.
Spahlinger's entfernte ergänzung (2011) is a work for modular instrumentation: either four, three or two guitars. Spahlinger's concept is that the processes set in order by the music can withstand multiple densities in their execution; the listener is merely receiving more or less of the aggregate information. Of course, the quartet version is the most fully enfleshed and the one that appears here. Microtones, achieved through closely related scordatura tunings, abound, as do glissandos, smaller interval string bends, and ringing high notes at the end of the bridge. Cast in multiple short sections, the juxtaposition of these various sounds, along with a host of noise effects, evolves throughout the composition. While one can imagine Spahlinger's processes at play with one another in a smaller collection of instruments, it is riotous fun to hear them ebulliently ricochet in the thickest of possible prescribed ensemble configurations.
Rainer Nonnenmann supplies copiously informative liner notes, and while David Babcock's translation contains some infelicities of prose, for the most part the analysis of the pieces is quite clear. The sound is uniformly well detailed and the quartet's overall playing is superlatively prepared. Contrary to first impressions, Aleph seems poised to tackle even further vistas on Volume 3.
