»Music is hope, confusion, and memory talking with each other, leading us toward futures we haven't yet imagined.«
Patrick Becker is co-director of the Wolke Verlag publishing house and co-editor of the contemporary music magazine Positionen.
Not the Royal Rock Star We Might Have Wished For
David M. A. P. Palmquist: »King Frederik X’s Honour March«
© Kongehuset
Surely, I can’t be the only one who nearly choked on my oyster on New Year’s Eve, when King Frederik X delivered his first New Year’s speech. What a modern take on the old tradition! Instead of sitting solemnly at a desk, he calmly walked into the room – a room demanding attention, where a futuristic mural stole the show. I could barely focus on the speech itself, distracted by the psychedelic imagery behind him: a visual nod to Yellow Submarine by The Beatles. Was this a sign of a rock star ascending the throne?
Wishful thinking, as it turned out. The speech turned into a parade of predictable platitudes. The same can be said about the King’s new Honour March, composed by David M. A. P. Palmquist, former conductor of the Royal Danish Life Guards Music Corps. A traditional and sluggish piece that plays it entirely by the book.
Since H.C. Lumbye gifted a march to Frederik VII in 1861, it has been a tradition for members of the royal family to be granted personal marches. Take the lively and self-ironic Parade March for Queen Margrethe, which includes quotes from both »I Danmark er jeg født« and »Daisy Bell«. Or Crown Prince Frederik’s brisk and quirky Honour March in 6/8 time – written by Fuzzy for the now-King’s 30th birthday – tipping its hat to Carl Nielsen’s »Som en rejselysten flåde«.
But where is the personal character in Palmquist’s march? The composer approaches the task far too conceptually, attempting to give the piece a musical signature with a kind of rebus at the beginning. The first note is an F, followed by one ten steps higher – thus spelling »Frederik the 10th« in musical code. The many references to other military music are just as internal. What’s missing is something that breaks with protocol – just like King Frederik himself has done in his most memorable and beloved moments. In the end, it sounds like a march that has forgotten who it was written for.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek. Proofreading: Seb Doubinsky
© PR
»A lot is projected onto music and making music – I'm careful, singing doesn't make you more intelligent and certainly doesn't make you a better person. It's like in sexuality. A lot of things go very consciously wrong for some people. Music like sex are means of communication, people come into contact and negotiate with each other and their instruments/tools and meet themselves in it. This is also the case when I listen to music – from every conceivable genre and context, even if I always notice that as a teenager I used to play a lot of jazz guitar.«
Bastian Zimmermann lives in Munich and works freelance in the areas of music and performance. As a dramaturge, he works with artists such as the soloist ensemble Kaleidoskop, Yael Ronen and Neo Hülcker. He is editor of the German speaking magazine Positionen – Texts on Current Music and curates projects such as »Music for Hotel Bars« and the festival Music Installations Nuremberg festival. His focus is on social aspects of making music, experimental music concepts and the questioning of bourgeois structures in contemporary music. In Spring 2025 he will take over the Wolke Verlag publishing house for books on music with Patrick Becker.
© PR
»Music to me is… my work. I've landed in the best job in the world, where a core task is to discover new music, to learn its internal logic and aesthetics, who created it, and why. I'm a music researcher and have just returned from the island of Java in Indonesia with my research partner and husband Nils, where we've been visiting experimental musicians in Yogyakarta – artists we've now followed for seven years.
One recurring theme is the trance/horse dance jathilan (or jaranan), which several of the artists have introduced us to. Jathilan is on one hand an old Javanese ritual, and on the other hand a contemporary (village) culture in full development. There is no single historically 'correct' jathilan. It's a practice that follows an old spiritual ritual, but is also open to current Indonesian influences.
The playlist consists of three tracks by Senyawa, Gabber Modus Operandi, and Raja Kirik, all of whom have incorporated the ritual into their music. The fourth track was supposed to be a 'traditional' jathilan, but as far as I know, no such recording exists on Spotify. Instead, I found a related jaranan piece that includes a dangdut song – an ultra-popular genre that is often performed as part of a jathilan event. The final track is one of the most popular dangdut songs at the moment.«
Sanne Krogh Groth is Associate Professor of Musicology at Lund University, Sweden, where she conducts research on electronic music and sound art, currently with a focus on Indonesia. Sanne was editor-in-chief of Seismograf from 2011–2019. In 2015, she established Seismograf Peer, which she is still the managing editor of.
© Henry Detweiler
»For me, music is work and a way to escape it. Music is the fanciest way of communication and therefore the most delicious food for analysis. It is what prolongs your feeling for longer than you can physically hold. Music is something after which you say: 'I’m glad you didn’t use words'. After all, it’s something that makes your commute or chores shorter, and this time-controlling function is the very first and foremost mystery I love about it.«
Liza Sirenko is a music theorist and music critic from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is a co-founder and board member of the Ukrainian media about classical music The Claquers. She is a former Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Center, CUNY (New York, USA), and a graduate of National Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine). Her current interests include processes in the classical music industry, contemporary opera in Ukraine, and a role of postcolonial moves in these. Liza is a former PR Director of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, currently working as a Program Officer at the Goethe-Institut Ukraine.
Feel Yourself Becoming Nature Again
Cecilia Fiona, Sophie Søs Meyer: »Ghost Flower Ritual«
© Farzad Soleimani
Frozen human bodies and faces shaped and painted like ceramics are meticulously carried around by flower sculptures that have abandoned their static nature. The roles are reversed. Nature becomes the living environment that grants the clay humans small, temporary lives in Ghost Flower Ritual at Copenhagen Contemporary.
The piece is a live installation with musicians and performers, where 34-year-old composer Sophie Søs Meyer has collaborated with visual artist Cecilia Fiona, who is of the same age. It’s a sensorially overwhelming, yet dramatically subdued ritual. Over the course of forty-five minutes, we sit together beneath a giant flower and sense the performers’ meticulous, slow movements. Meanwhile, soundscapes and small pulsating figures from four string players and a flute shape a landscape of colors, tones, and movements that melt together – filling the high-ceilinged room with auditory and visual presence. We are part of a whole.
I love the wild costumes that descend strangely from the sky. I love being part of the ritual that heals our forgotten connection to nature, which is the very foundation of our lives. I love the sound of stroked, plucked, and blown wood from Athelas’ musicians. Culture is nature. The human animals and the flowers are part of the greater consciousness. It’s all a hyper-complex mechanism. Cecilia Fiona possesses an extraordinary visual and creative abundance in her intricate details, and Sophie Søs Meyer is precise and intriguing in her swaying tonal figures that change slowly and meticulously. Until one flower blows into the large conch shell. Then the ritual is over.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek