Timbral Innovations in Heinz Holliger’s Choral Music: from Dona nobis pacem to Die Jahreszeiten

Abstract

The article is devoted to the three most famous works for chorus by contemporary Swiss composer Heinz Holliger (b. 1939) composed during the course of ten years – from 1969 to 1979. Departing from the field of experiments in the field of vocal articulation of the representatives of the post-war avant-garde, Holliger was able to enrich to a considerable degree the timbral element of vocal composition with new performance techniques. The latter include singing through inhalation, singing with emptied lungs, voiced exhalation, etc. The systematization of Holliger’s timbral techniques presented by the author of this article sets as its goal the continuity between Holliger’s choral works and those by his older colleagues. While the analysis of Dona nobis pacem demonstrates the development of the techniques of phonemic composition which are present in the works of Mauricio Kagel, Luciano Berio and Gyӧrgy Ligeti, in Psalm and in the cycle Die Jahreszeiten Holliger generates new methods of vocal articulation, which were later reflected in the works of not only his younger, but also his older contemporaries.

The main accentuation in this article is placed by the study of the cycle Die Jahreszeiten – Holliger’s largest and most significant choral composition. Analyzing the timbral and textural structure of the pieces comprising the cycle, the author arrives at the conclusion about the composer’s wish to approach the reflection of the automatized “impersonal” writing of Scardanelli (which was Hölderlin’s pseudonym in the late period of his poetical creativity, when he was suffering from mental affliction) by means of his compositional resources. The phenomena of the soundless word and fragmented statement of the musical material bring a number of pieces from Holliger’s cycle closer to the identical musical discoveries by Luigi Nono in his works from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as in his late works composed from the influence of reading Hölderlin-Scardanelli’s poetic works.

Thereby, the study of Holliger’s musical compositions makes it possible for us to examine the Swiss composer’s choral works not only as an organic continuation of his colleagues’ experiments, but also as a genuine culmination in the development of Western European choral writing in the 1970s manifested in the greatest amount of enrichment of the timbral side of modern choral composition.

Keywords: post-war avant-garde, choral texture, vocal timbres, Heinz Holliger, Scardanelli, Hölderlin, Mauricio Kagel, Gyӧrgy Ligeti, Luciano Berio