What’s about the sound of piano?
The sound of the piano decays.
It cannot be sustained. I let it loose time and again.
It appears by disappearing; starting to disappear just after the attack.
In disappearing it begins to live, to change.
The piano: an instrument, that allows me to hear how many ways sound can disappear.
There seems to be no end to disappearance.
The sound of piano!
I can hear, how listening becomes the awareness of fading sound.
In this way my composing is based on listening - on listening as awareness of fading sound.
Fading sound is the link between life and art; between perception in daily life and perception while performing, while composing, and the awareness of fading sound may become the awareness of presence.
I am pianist and - in addition - organist. As organist I never forget that the organ is a wind-instrument. My pieces for organ and my “installations” for organ (the installations last many hours) ask: Am I realizing a piece? There is hardly anything you may hear in the church. The organ releases as a jewel each single sound; each stream of air; each noise: disappearing into the space of the hall.
The listener will find the way to listening: in this particular room with this particular organ and its streams of sound/ air/ wind. All sound, all streams of air and noises are quiet; sometimes hardly recognizable.
The sound of music; the noise of music; the sound and noise of everyday life: they cut into each other. They are connected by a deep corporeality.
In my music you will find pieces or sounds that seem to avoid the decision: appearing or disappearing? They appear while disappearing, they disappear while appearing. I try to open the space between disappearance and appearance, to allow the development of corporeality and materiality.
As composer I want to create situations that may invite possibilities. Listening I want to find a location where nearly nothing is fixed, where nearly everything is possible. Not yet vanished, not yet a new attack: but within “between” there may be the chance that I become aware of something I don’t know. And I become aware of my body, my breath, and the fact that I am still alive.
Music and every-day life, art and life are combined.
We all - performers, listeners, participants in any way - find the possibility to create by ourselves. Therefore, I do not want to create a “piece” but to open a space, to evoke a specific situation: to move, to breathe, to enter relationships, to come into touch with each other.
An important aim for me: to compose without composing; to create situations: something might happen.
© Eva-Maria Houben
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