GEHÖRSAND

Márton Illés’ new work for voices, ensemble and live electronics is a formidable undertaking: it brings together hybrid sonic forces to form a multi-layered vocal composition. ›von mund zu mund‹ (from mouth to mouth) was commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, SWR Experimentalstudio and Berliner Festspiele / Musikfest Berlin, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. In collaboration with the poet Felix Reinhuber, Illés has set his sights on nothing less than the evolution of human language. The premiere will take place on 18 September 2026 in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie, complemented by two works by Clara Iannotta under the direction of Michael Wendeberg. The work will subsequently be performed in Frankfurt and Stuttgart in 2027. While the piece was still in the process of being created, Dirk Wieschollek spoke with Illés and Reinhuber about the current state of the project.

Dirk Wieschollek: Márton Illés and Felix Reinhuber – how did your paths first cross?

Márton Illés: We met in Paris in 2020 as fellows at the Cité des Arts. Felix showed me some of his poems, and I was immediately fascinated: his language is very dense, very abstract, very colourful. I then made an initial attempt at approaching it with ›Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von FelixReinhuber‹ (Three Songs after Poems by Felix Reinhuber) for mezzo-soprano and piano (2022). That’s when I realised that I could work extremely well with these texts compositionally. With this new work, one can now speak of a first genuine collaboration.

DW: A collaboration in which both spheres respond directly to one another?

MI: Yes and no. Felix’s text is, in principle, complete. I only try, cautiously, to suggest changes where it seems compositionally meaningful.

Felix Reinhuber: For me, it’s a learning process and my first major collaboration with a composer of contemporary music.

DW: Did you have any prior contact with contemporary music?

FR: My stay at the Cité des Arts was, somewhat surprisingly, very much shaped by new music – initially above all through the composer and fellow resident Katrin Klose, who commissioned a text from me for a choral piece. I did a great deal of research into spectral music and contemporary music in general. And then the fruitful connection with Márton developed.

DW: Is the text conceived as a kind of reservoir of material for the composition, or is it set as a whole?

MI: I don’t want to treat the poetry as a quarry. Felix’s literary source is far too coherent in content for that. But it was important to me not to receive a classical libretto text. I wanted genuine, autonomous poetry that exists independently of music. Nevertheless, I have the freedom to handle these texts relatively freely. It’s a dialogic process.

FR: The choice of themes, however, was certainly influenced by my reception of your music. You had recommended the ›Psychogramme‹ to me at the time. There’s also that strong sense of physicality in it. Originally, it was meant to be more about the brain, but that ultimately seemed too abstract. I wanted more narration. And so the decision was made to focus more on the evolution of language. Also because I realised just how much physicality is embedded in it. The entire anatomy of the human being is, after all, the prerequisite for our ability to speak.

DW: You have spoken of »poetic fiction« in relation to the text, nourished by scientific factuality.

FR: Yes. It was not only a matter of navigating between lyric poetry and narrative text as the basis of the music, but also of navigating between poetic freedom and science. I wanted the text to be saturated with contemporary insights into language development. It is a field of knowledge in which much remains speculative and numerous theories coexist. I did not align myself with any one particular theory, but rather implemented a cluster of theories.

DW: It is an intensely sound-oriented text – not only with regard to the many pre-linguistic vocalisations. The text is full of terms that themselves already point towards the sonic: words such as »schnalzen« (snap), »klacken« (clack), »prasselrascheln« (crackling rustle), etc. Is it easier or rather more difficult to respond to this musically?

MI: My favourite word in the first prologue is »Gehörsand« (aural sand). Something immediately takes shape for me when I hear it …

DW: The prologue almost reads like the anatomical emergence of hearing: »Muschelrauschen« (shell murmur), »Hörschnecke« (aural spiral), »Gehörsand« – it will be interesting to see how this beginning is realised musically.

MI: The opening prologues will in fact stand on their own, without music.

DW: More generally, how did you approach the material compositionally without »setting it to music« in the classical sense?

MI: That’s a question I keep coming back to. I let the music run parallel to the language, but not always synchronously. The clacking, for example, is also present in the music, but not always where it actually occurs. There are, however, interferences. Music can realise onomatopoeia on an intensified level; it can multiply it a hundredfold in space: behind, in front of, above and around the text.

DW: The text contains three major layers: for each chapter, a prologue, a more descriptive text, and a kind of inner perspective of the individual stages of human development. Does the music follow a similar three-layer structure?

MI: It was very important to me that the fundamental layers of the text are clearly presented: there are these animal or proto-human sounds, which recur across different voices, sometimes also within the ensemble. Then there is a recitative layer and a more reflective one. These layers are always clearly differentiated so that the different layers of meaning can be distinguished and the texts clearly understood, because that is something I find very difficult to tolerate in classical opera: texts that one simply cannot understand.

DW: Since the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart are involved, one would not assume that this will be sung in the traditional sense, would one?

MI: There is singing, but relatively little. There will, however, be a whole range of vocal techniques. There is narration, and a great deal is spoken, with the prosody of the language being composed in different ways. At the same time, these proto-human sounds come into play. In addition, both the vocal and instrumental sounds are electronically transformed.

DW: It leads to a simultaneity of perceptual layers?

MI: Definitely.

DW: The literary source presents an evolution of human perceptual perspectives. From chapter to chapter, language becomes more differentiated and multi-layered. Does the music likewise become increasingly complex?

MI: At first, everything is still diffuse; the proto-humans do not yet perceive themselves as part of a community. At the beginning, only the sounds of individual beings are articulated, then words, sentences. Later, more and more is brought together. Group interactions grow, and it becomes more dialogic – in the music as well.

FR: In the fourth chapter, a love story is also suggested. That is where perhaps the most interpersonal form of dialogue emerges. Fundamentally, I wanted to present language as a collective phenomenon, as something that arises within the group.

MI: And that is now the major task for me: to render this process compositionally.

DW: What is the relationship between the vocal layer and the instrumental events? Do they merge into a single large sound body, or are they conceived more in contrast?

MI: A fusion is definitely intended. Through electronics, I can do a great deal of instrumental things with the voices – and conversely, develop very vocal qualities from the instruments. Much remains deliberately ambiguous. The instruments »speak« as well. I use many instrumental techniques with vocal qualities that move far away from classical modes of playing. And with the voices, too, it is often the case that, through electronics, one can no longer tell exactly where they originate. I find that incredibly exciting. The classical separation between instrumental and vocal no longer holds.

DW: That sounds like spatial composition.

MI: Absolutely.

DW: How is the listening perspective conceived?

MI: There will be a surround sound environment. The voices are distributed throughout the Philharmonie space. The ensemble also has local loudspeakers. That means we will have full spatial sound, but also individual localised sounds in the sense of rendering specific articulations. The listeners are, in effect, right in the middle of the action.

DW: The linguistic imagery in the text is also conceived very spatially. Are there concrete staging ideas? Or is the approach: no unnecessary visualisation?

MI: It was my request that we be able to incorporate minimal scenic actions. The singers will be moving through the space. With ›Homo sapiens‹, this becomes most tangible. There is conversation, something communal emerges, a ritual in which everyone gathers on stage.

DW: The whole work ends with a glimpse into the year 2100, a tentative end to the cultural development of humankind. In the sixth chapter, we arrive at the perceptual modes of virtual reality. There is the term Synthus, the Synthus subject. What does this mean?

FR: It is a neologism. I was searching for something that could express the futuristic while already being semantically charged. One associates Synthus with a certain synergy or synthesis – something being brought together.

DW: An apotheosis of the virtual? The possibility of entering into any form of existence, assimilating any mode of perception with the help of this imaginary programme? Inner and outer perspectives are, in any case, no longer distinguishable in the final chapter.

FR: This dominance of the virtual, given our living conditions, naturally suggests itself. In a certain sense, it is also, for me, the apotheosis of language and its simultaneous erasure. Language, for us as human beings, exists so that we may draw closer to one another, so that individuals can communicate with one another. One of the utopias – or dystopias – triggered by ChatGPT and similar models is that, at some point, we may no longer need spoken language at all, because these language models we are currently developing will be so advanced that we will, in effect, communicate telepathically, directly from brain to brain, without the »detour« via the mouth.

DW: A terrifying thought, however – human beings without language. The final word of the text is »Stille« (silence). How is that to be understood at the end – is it a positive or a negative silence?

FR: Márton and I spoke about that at length. We exchanged ideas in advance about visions of the future. I wanted to keep the ending ambivalent, not a complete dystopia. And silence is, after all, an ambivalent phenomenon. Silence can be an ideal. For me, the silence at the end of the work also evokes a kind of pantheism, something divine. That is to say, the eternal human dream of transcending oneself and truly dissolving into another, higher perspective. But this vision always has something unsettling about it as well. Unsettling because it is no longer human. I do not, however, want any one interpretation to impose itself; rather, the whole should remain suspended – as an aesthetically open space.