Sunwheel Lelystad – Michael Fahres

Sunwheel

The sun is subjoined to the fire

‘If an eruption of the sun is radiated in a direct line towards the earth, the powerful wave of X-rays, radio waves and ultraviolet radiation can reach the earth in less than nine minutes.’ Joe Hirman, Space Environment Service Center, Colorado.

Since time immemorial mankind has been spellbound by the sun. Not just in admiration or because of religious feelings: just think of the sun gods of the Incas or the god Ra of ancient Egypt, gods and myths that admired the salutary power of the sun, but also feared its destructive effect. Whole regions were scorched; resulting in torrid steppes, drought and famine catastrophes as in the Sahel desert.

Today our globe is being warmed up as a result of a thinning ozone layer. The sun itself is more active, so-called storms can be registered on the gas planet sun. Interactions between various magnetic fields cause these powerful eruptions.

My personal, and for the first time different, experiences with the sun carry me back to the year 1976. I discovered the magnetic field of the sun, which was being registered and recorded visually on photographic material with the radio telescope in Dwingeloo. This was a cosmic oscillation of magnetic particles. I wanted to make them audible, hoping that this sun-sound would be my sun-music. Not a ‘sun hymn by Echnaton’, but a scientific reality, from which music comes into existence.

Added to this was the ‘Sun Observatory’ of Robert Morris, a landscape artefact, not a modern creation, but a runic grave-like, circular hill structure, supplied with granite and steel plates, cracks of light aimed directly at the sun. In the words of Morris, it had something to do with neolithic (Stonehenge) or eastern (city construction of Peking) building structures.

These premises gave me the creative inspiration to compose ‘Sunwheel’: to create a sundial in the light beam of musical events. A story, told in 18 hours. It begins and ends with the sunrise and sunset. In periods of one hour each at the most, composition radio plays, sound environments and performances develop. Themes like, among others, solar radiation, sun worship, sun-blaze, dryness, sun-fire-water, sun eruptions are dealt with in an associative, but also informative way, though not in the sense of programme-music.

The sun-music came into being through a joint effort with the two musicians, Kurt Dahlke and Michael Jüllich. Electronic and natural sounds, composed, improvised, affected by the light intensity or by the passing traffic, put the wheel in motion and turn it like musical fireworks.

For the first time, the drum ‘Bianco’, made out of marble, is sounded, and an acoustic, virtual room is shaped with the help of a computer simulation.

The wheel turns around the sun, the fire, which in its flood will even seize, in the end, the oil wells of Kuwait. The film by the German film director Werner Herzog pictures these ‘Lectures in Darkness’. then, in the night, the last fires will die down.

‘Sunwheel’ attempts to achieve an integration between the musical concept and the world of Robert Morris. The composition emphasizes and symbolizes the familiar ideas and spatial prerequisites. The medieval meaning of the concept of the ‘solar cycle’ accurately describes the intentions of ‘Sunwheel’: It is the contemplation of various aspects, not in a dialectical sense. It is the simulation of an event not experienced so far.

Michael Fahres

June 1992

Program Sunwheel Lelystad NL

Details Sunwheel Lelystad

The Plates

1992 (64’)
live electronic music

The first ‘acoustic’ spatial axis, compass: East/Southeast is drawn in the solar observatory by Robert Morris.
The two steel plates, located in the east of the observatory, are made audible by magnetic fields.
The sunrise, the associated increasing light intensity, the growing car traffic and the passing of cars influence, among other things, the sound of the steel plates.

Details Sunwheel – The Plates

Sunspots

1992

For Marble drum ‘Bianco’ and electronics
Composer and performer: Michael Jüllich

Sunbeams

1987 (33’00”) (Fahres)

The electronic composition ‘Sunbeams’, originally arranged for large orchestras in 1996/97, was presented during this Sunwheel project.
The picture of the sunbeams, which, for instance, in the case of a thunderstorm, break through clearly visible from under a cloud, caused me to write this tripartite composition (Sunheat, Clouds, Astral). Various musical styles like minimal music, pop music or sound-sheets composition are strictly separated here, or used in an interwoven pattern.

For more information: Sunbeams

Details Sunbeams

Sun worship

1979 (45’03”)
Radioplay

This radio play deals with the theme ‘Sun’ in a concrete and associative way. Four aspects, informatively recited by a news reporter, form the thematic framework of the play: The sun at the Incas (Indian fairy tales), the sun at the time of National Socialism (German anecdotes), the sun in the Federal Republic of Germany (Republican short story), and finally, the sun in the Sahel desert (epilogue: Sahel).

In between are the prayers (four archaic invocations of the sun): Nivea, Pyromania, Blood incantation, Dreamt of America. These prayers are deliberately read by Dutch actors in the German language, to emphasize associatively through unusual intonation the language of the “primitives”.
The electronic sounds correspond to the exact telescope-measurements as described in the composition “Sunstructure”.

Details – Sunworship

The sign W (Das Zeichen, Chinyangjo)

1992 (12’20”) (Fahres)
Electronic Music

This is an electronic arrangement of “The sign – Chinyangjo” (1988/1992) for six brass instruments and two percussionists.The original composition “The Sign, Chinyangjo”, which was composed for Western wind instruments, musically picks up a Korean motif. “The sign – West” behaves the other way round: by using ethnic timbres, the original work with a western touch is transformed back into Asian musical worlds. This electronic arrangement with the music instrument “Lightning”, built by Don Buchla, is played by Kurt Dahlke with infrared rods.

The sign O (Das Zeichen, Chinyangjo)

1992 (12’20”) (Dahlke, Fahres)
Electronic music

This is an electronic arrangement of “The sign – Chinyangjo” (1988/1992) for six brass instruments and two percussionists.
The composition “The sign” came into being on the basis of a dream. Was it a dream, or dreamed reality? I am sitting in a satellite; ” I am flying around the world. I see countries: China, India, Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Rome etcetera, the cultural history of the world. “Finally I saw the mist go west and blow away over Japan.”

The sign P (Das Zeichen, Chinyangjo)

1992 (10’40”) (Dahlke, Fahres)
Electronic music

This arrangement uses only two motifs from the original composition “The Sign, Chinyangjo” and adds a new melody line and a drum kit, which are supposed to trigger cinematic associations: The dreamlike journey becomes a pictorial reality.

“The sign” versions Ost and West are arranged by Kurt Dahlke.

Details The Sign

The Circle 1 and 2

Electronic Music; tape music
1973/1992 (18’20”)

The “Graphmus System”, a composition system developed in the early seventies that translates words for the play “Stoffwechsel” into music, served as the starting point for the composition.
In this case the word “ideal” was connected to the graphic form, the circle. The circle is the very form which can only be calculated proportionally, but can never be drawn precisely, and is thus an ideal. In 1992 and 1994 “The circle” was revised, there are two different pieces with different durations, and during the Sunwheel project newly performed.

Solar Radiation

1992 (60′)
Electro Instrumental Music and Gong

Sounds are hurled like shooting stars from outside into the inner circle in a spiral.

Awning

1992 (60′)
Electro Instrumental Music and Gong

This is a composition in which the spatial rotation principle between the inner and outer circles of the observatory is developed musically. Sound sheets explode. Shards of melodies remain.

Blaze

1992 (60′) (Fahres, Jüllich)
Electro instrumental music

The heat, increasing towards noon, is signified musically in an associative way through, for instance, “dry” sounds. Sound sequences pulsate in the room, from within to the outside or vice versa. The djembe, an African drum, directs us away from the “blaze”.

The Signal

1991 (39’01”) (Fahres)
Electro instrumental music

Chants of the Selk’nam Indians from Fireland (Argentina), sung by shaman Lola Kjepa, formed the melodies in this composition. “Ham-nia” is a trance-piece. Lola Kjepa speaks about her happy death, which will lead her into the light hereafter.

For more information: Hain

Variationen auf Hain

1992 (39’01”) (Dahlke)
Electro instrumental music

Kurt Dahlke composed three variations, which interpret the “Hain” songs in a new musical way.

Astral games

1992 (07’57”) (Dahlke)
Electronic music

Variations on the music box motif from “Astral”, the third movement of the orchestral piece “Sunbeams”.

Kiln

1992 (20′) (Fahres)
Improvisation

Rough heat and the absence of rain change fertile land into deserts. Natural materials such as paper or wood are used to create acoustic dry zones. The influence of traffic, a negative circulation factor, appears as a musical element.

Karryon (Shoort)

1992 (21’38”) (Fahres)
Radiophonic composition

This is again about the lives of the Selk’nam Indians on Fireland. Fireland received its name from the white people, who from their ships, still far-off, saw the fires that were lit in the canoes of the Indians. The colonization of the new colonists caused the Indians to become extinct. The ozone gap, which extends around the South pole in a radius of at least 1000 kilometres, has now reached the southern bank of Fireland.

The second and main part of Karryon Shoort is the bird composition “Cauquen del Fuego”, the goose of fire. These birds played an important role in the lives of the Selk’nam Indians, as did the Shoorts, the demigods who appear during the initiation ritual Hain.

Nabla

1990 (22′) (Fahres)
Radioplay

The radio play “Nabla”, made in cooperation with Michael Jüllich, deals with environmental problems. The sounds which were recorded in the “Nabla-bearer” of the Haringvliet sluices, symbolize aridity. Mankind’s passivity caused an environmental catastrophy, which has led to an increase in global temperature.

For more information: Nabla

Flood

1992 (54’17”)
Electric Instrumental

The thematic link between fire and water, sun and moon, these two antipodes are emphasized musically. For instance, at the ditch, dug in a semi-circle to the side of the observatory, hissing sounds of water drops falling on hot stone slabs are produced.

Mote

1992 (50′) (Dahlke, Fahres, Jüllich)
Electro instrumental composition for gong, gong drum, three radios and electronics.

So-called sun storms, originating from excessive activity of the sun, might, for example, affect the entire shortwave network of radio transfer. Such transmission-radiation-influences, which, among other things, cause surface noises or other acoustic disturbances, are guided, for example, by the accidentally appearing traffic stream, which determines the total volume of sound of the composition. The second
“acoustic” space-axis, compass: south-east/southwest, is drawn. The acoustic transfer of the beat sounds of the marble drum by means of a large loudspeaker, placed in front of the long, changes these into oscillations. These are scanned and made audible by means of contact microphones. The percussionist thus plays, directly and indirectly, two instruments.

Sunstructure

1992 (25’22”) (Dahlke, Fahres)
Electronic music

“Sunstructure” corresponds to the authentic sun structure, recorded on photographic material by the solar telescope at Dwingeloo. The data of measurement were then transposed by the observatory in Utrecht by means of computers in the audible frequency range (7 octaves), resolution rate half intervals, tempered tuning. More Information see “Sonnenmusik“.

The composition, which consists of 40 voices, was originally written for a large orchestra. Kurt Dahlke arranged the electronic version for the “Sunwheel” project. The editing of “Sunstructure” uses two different methods. On the one hand, individual solar frequencies are released from their overall context and assigned an independent musical function such as motif or melody, on the other hand, the frequencies of the solar structure as a whole are transposed to musical scales, restoring direct Earth-relatedness.

More information on Sunstructure

Astral

1987/1992 (09’27”) (Fahres)
Electro Instrumental Music

Astral is the 3rd part of the composition “Sunbeams”.
Various musical styles like minimal music, pop music or sound-sheets composition are strictly separated here, or used in an interwoven pattern.

Shimmering

1992
Electronic composition

Evening Chants

For marble drum “Bianco” and djembe

Identity

1992

For gong solo

The sun sets in the west. It optically falls on the gong, i.e. The gong and the setting sun are congruent with each other at a certain moment.

Karryon Shore

1992 (19’09”) (Fahres)
Radiophonic composition

The third and last part of the composition “Karryon”. “Shore”, the coast, deals with the Staten Islands, which are located in the southeast of Tierra del Fuego near Antarctica. The meaning of the “Staten Islands”, discovered by the Dutch navigator Jacobo le Maire in 1615, who refers to the Dutch states when naming the islands, is treated in three levels of text. The rotating lighthouse sounds were derived from birdcalls.

At the end the compositions Mercury Sound and Escape Shore are played.

Mercury Sound

(1992) (4’18”) (Fahres)
Electronic composition with voice.

The title “Mercury Sound” – the sound and also the strait of Mercury – refers to a bay of the same name on Clarence Island in southern Chile. The Yamana Indians found the valuable flint here, which was not only used to light the fire in their boats but also as a means of payment. The musician Ramon Ernesto Leiva sings a song of the Yamana, the Canoe Indians, who still live in small numbers on the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego.

Escape Shore

(1992) (0’31”) (Fahres)
Electronic sounds.

With the piece “Escape Shore”, the Cauquenes of Patagonia escape from the place of action and fly to other regions. These and other birds fly out of the exploding ball of flame to escape the approaching disaster that is hovering over the Selk’nam Indians.

Lessons of Darkness

Film by Werner Herzog
1992

Kuwait after the 1991 war.
’….it’s almost like a science fiction film. Every day I was there, I had the very strong feeling that this is a landscape and an environment that can no longer be on our planet, which is actually no longer habitable. Nevertheless, of course, we know that this is us, this is our earth. You really feel like you’ve landed somewhere on a strange planet. That’s how it was there. Everything was darkened, almost like a vision of horror in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, or in Dante’s Inferno. We tried to turn it into a great requiem. You have to realise that there is an incredible aesthetic of horror, a fascination that is brought into this film and that is almost like a great chronicle, like a great requiem for the memory of mankind.

Something like that can easily, very easily, happen again.

Werner Herzog (who put this film at our disposal)