‘Music and Language Tilt into Each Other’: Annette Schmucki Interviewed by Alistair Zaldua
Annette Schmucki, Alistair Zaldua · Contemporary Music Review · 2020
Swiss composer Annette Schmucki (*1968) has written compositional work for the concert hall, a laptop duet with Petra Ronner (band) and collaborative radio plays (Hörspiele) with Reto Friedmann (blablabor). In this interview, she describes her work as related to, but essentially different from, the ideas presented and exemplified by Cornelius Schwehr. Responding to Schwehr’s article on the topic of music and language, during this discussion Schmucki explains her aesthetic position, her lifelong engagement with music and language, and the ways that these concerns translate practically into her compositional approach. In relation to this, Schmucki describes her growing distance to the traditional composer/performer divide, in preference for her increasing interest in collaborative work. One of the main consequences of this has been the ways that her scores are notated, becoming more instruction-based and inviting her performers to share responsibility for the piece. In 2018, Lauren Redhead and Alistair Zaldua commissioned Schmucki to write a piece for organ and live electronics. The piece that ensued, a discussion of which concludes this interview, is 54 stops/gresillement/alphabet des rauschens (2019). As a score that consists almost entirely of instructions, the piece exemplifies her specific approach to collaborative work in the field of music and language.