Guero (laughing man)
Guero - Study for Piano (1970, revised 1988) is a composition by Helmut Lachenmann .
The piano piece was commissioned by the pianist Alfons Kontarsky , who published this piece in a collection of contemporary piano compositions. It was premiered on December 1, 1970 in Hamburg by Peter Roggenkamp.
The work is just under 5 minutes long and notated graphically . The pianist strokes the keyboard surfaces (white / black keys) with and without aids, but without using them “normally”. The result consists of rattling "perforated" sounds, similar to those produced by the scraped percussion instrument " Guero ". In addition, there are a variety of actions within the piano (plucking strings, tuning nails, agraffes; hits against the frame strut and body, etc.)
The extended treatment of the instrument consists primarily in the fact that not a single “normally” struck note is heard, but only noises produced percussively. In formal terms, Lachenmann distinguishes between different types of finger strokes, different stroke areas and speeds, which create both the pulse density and the dynamics. With his three studies from 1970 (which, in addition to Pression, also includes Dal Niente ), Lachenmann opened a group of works that he named musique concrète instrumentale - based on and in contrast to musique concrète , which primarily contains sounds and noises of everyday life (including the of instruments).
In Lachenmann's oeuvre, the piece can be classified into a series of chamber music works that question the previous use and aesthetics of an instrument or a compositional style; In later ensemble and orchestral compositions Lachenmann continued these ideas consistently and in a complex form. In this respect, Guero represents an easily understandable approach to the thinking of this composer, since the instrument, also via its keyboard, is used by the pianist for the work, but not in its conventional way.
Recordings
- Helmut Lachenmann (piano), 1972, Edition RZ (LP)
- Roland Keller, 1986, Col legno
- Helmut Lachenmann, 1995, Disques Montaigne
- Marino Formenti, 2003, Col legno
- Herbert Schuch (piano), Oehms (CD)
Receptions
Georg Kröll in his diary for piano number 6 Very slowly with a guero effect (after Lachenmann)