Der er ganske enkelt noget ved Cisternernes grandiose radikalitet, som passer godt til performancekunstneren Marina Abramovićs kunstneriske dagsordener. Og det bliver bedre endnu, for til trods for – eller måske på grund af – værkets gennemgående voldsomhed er Abramovićs filmiske operainstallation Seven Deaths utroligt livsbekræftende. Derfor: Enhver i hovedstadsområdet, som netop nu befinder sig i en mere eller mindre radikal livskrise, burde begive sig ned i Cisternernes dyb under Frederiksbergs muld og bruge en time på at opleve, hvad der udspiller sig dér. Det kan kun hjælpe, er jeg overbevist om. 

»Du giver mig din tid, og jeg giver dig syv dødsfald,« siger Abramović på skærmen i den instruktionsvideo til tilhørerne, som kan ses ved nedgangen til Cisternerne. Hun forklarer, at filmenes dødsfald er symbolske udtryk for de mange gange, vi alle igennem livet »dør«, når tæppet trækkes væk under os. Kærlighed, forstås. Som hun siger: »Du forelsker dig, du mister dig selv, du overlever – og så gør du det hele igen.«

What does nostalgia sound like? Is it a fragment of a childhood melody, a dusty cassette tape in a basement – or something more elusive that appears only in fleeting glimpses? In the genre of dungeon synth, it is neither old instruments nor authentic recordings that awaken the longing for what once was. Here nostalgia emerges in the noise, in the decay, and in the analogue shadows of a past that has long since vanished, yet still feels strangely familiar. In many ways, one might call it a nostalgic music. But is that really how it is experienced?

The forgotten ghosts

Dungeon synth began in the early 2010s as an attempt to recall the more obscure solo projects from the margins of black metal, where musicians such as Mortiis, Wongraven, Depressive Silence, and Burzum once reigned. As often happens with revival movements, however, the return soon became something different from its point of departure.

Where else would Bára Gísladóttir premiere her new orchestral work DÆGRIN than on the luxury liner of a music house, Harpa – of course, during Dark Music Days, in the middle of þorri, the darkest phase of the year in the old Nordic calendar, where the fourth month of winter begins on a Friday between January 19 and 26? Hardly anywhere.

Gísladóttir is shaped by this country’s basalt, wind and winter light, and although she is now based in Copenhagen, she has for many become the very sound of Iceland. Of course, the darkness was massive in her new work – deep, vibrating undercurrents – but there were new elements too: the Iceland Symphony Orchestra unfolded a more spacious, panoramic sound field than in her earlier, more compressed works. Screeching violins carved sharp lines through the orchestral mass, while subtle displacements slowly undermined any sense of stability. The piece took on the character of a pent-up hiss: one long, almost immobile tone was held like a strained breath, and around it arose a teeming world of rustling, friction and microscopic string movements. And listen – were there not glimmers of light here and there? Yes, there were. Still, a perfect opening to Dark Music Days.

In Country, Niels Rønsholdt brings two voices together in an acoustic chamber-music setting. One is Jakob Kullberg’s – recognizable, embodied, raw. The other is also his, but not entirely: a manipulated, filtered, and displaced voice that drifts through the work like an alien echo. Within an otherwise organic universe of cello, chamber orchestra, and song, this voice appears detached, almost homeless. It sounds – but it has no visible body.

What does it mean to hear a voice without a human being? And what does it do to our experience of presence, credibility, and identity when the same singer is both present and absent in his own music?

Another year, another brand-new, full-scale opera set in Bergen. Sure, Norway’s former capital has a certain magic at the best of times but in the 666-pages of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star things reach a whole new level. A priest presides over the funeral of a man who’s been dead for a week, even though he was on a flight with her the previous day. A carer for psychiatric patients ventures into the woods adjacent to her clinic where she encounters a large bird with reptilian scales and a human face. Most significantly, all nine narrators in Knausgaard’s novel become aware of a huge new celestial entity in the sky. All this apparently allows them to see the dreadful truths that are corroding their private lives and ask themselves why they even exist. 

To call a festival Sacrum Profanum is to invite extremes. Kraków’s international festival of new music, founded in 2003, lived up to that promise from the outset, presenting a programmatic range that stretched from Cat Roberts’ organic electronica to Mariam Rezaei’s industrial turntable scratching, produced on her fiercely percussive decks.

Yet the festival’s most striking gesture took place far from the concert halls. The Swiss ensemble Alponom performed Stephen O’Malley’s You Origin four times: twice at sunrise and twice at sunset. First, the musicians were positioned in five pairs on a mountain outside the city. The distant roar of traffic slipped between the tones as alpine horns built deep, cyclical resonances. Passing dog walkers – and their dogs – stopped and listened.

For a long time, we measured the vitality of the Danish composing scene by its ability to present the newest of the new. I’ve stood talking to concert programmers who laughed indulgently when I mentioned a young composer by referring to a work that was three or four years old: »That’s an eternity ago«, they said. »He doesn’t write like that anymore – now it’s much better; he thinks so himself too!« And then the look that says: You’re a dinosaur, mate. I actually rather liked that arrogance.

But recently something has shifted. At the genre organization Art Music Denmark, the project »GENSTART« (RESTART] has been launched to help artists get works revived that are no longer brand new. And all around, this return of old acquaintances is flourishing: when the otherwise forward-looking SPOR Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, it did so in part with works by Simon Løffler, Sandra Boss, and Ea Borre that had already been performed at the festival before. Why buy new when you can reuse?