Sieben Stufen

Sieben Stufen uses the poem Verfall (Decline, Decay) by Georg Trakl (1887-1914). All sounds are derived from electronic manipulations of two recordings of the poem spoken by four different voices (two in German and two in French), as well as four German key-words sung in seven pitches and their four corresponding French translations in seven different pitches (Verfall- -ruine, Abend--au soir, Glocken--cloches, Vögel--oiseaux).

The piece is structured in seven sections, representing simultaneously an approach and a distortion of the text. The durations of these parts are in the relation 12-10-2-6-4-8-1 . Only after the seventh part does the text itself finally appear, presenting a counterpoint between the French and German versions. A retro-coda follows, which compresses the entire piece in reversal into 49 seconds. This contraction is superposed with the 56 sung words (four in both languages on seven notes). Compressions are also placed at the beginning of each section, these condense the following material into two-second ‘upbeats.’ In all seven sections the poem acts as a ‘sound-atom.’

excerpt

 

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Analysis Sieben Stufen (in German)

 

sound examples for the analysis