Surrogate Cities

Heiner Goebbels/Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, 2000
© ECM Records
© ECM Records

voices: Jocelyn B. Smith, David Moss
conductor: Peter Rundel

with words by Heiner Mueller, Hugo Hamilton and Paul Auster

"Surrogate Cities" is an attempt to approach the phenomenon of the city from various sides, to tell stories of cities, expose oneself to them, observe them, it is material about metropolises that has accumulated over the course of time. The work was inspired partly by texts, but also by drawings, structures and sounds, the juxtaposition of orchestra and sampler playing a considerable role because of the latter's ability to store sounds and noises ordinarily alien to orchestral sonorities. The associations I have are with a realistic, certainly contradictory, but ultimately positive image of the modern city. My intention was not to produce a close-up but to try and read the city as a text and then to translate something of its mechanics and architecture into music...
When it comes to the power dynamics of the city, the individual is always the more vulnerable party. Art rebels against this overpowering structure by strengthening the subjective element. Music, too, is composed from a highly subjective perspective, for composers usually justify what they write by saying that they "need to get it out of their system". That is only partly true for me. I try to gain a bit more distance. I construct something that confronts the audience and the audience reacts to it, discovering in the music a space they can enter complete with their associations and ideas.
(From a conversation with Heiner Goebbels)

total playing time: 70:10

Texts

Untitled (Review, en)
1/2001, Brian Marley, AVANT

Untitled (Review, en)
6/2000, Jocelyn Clarke, Music Ireland

Untitled (Review, en)
6/2000, Andy Hamilton, CLASSIC CD

Untitled (Review, en)
[Over the past few years]
6/2000, Richard Whitehouse, GRAMOPHONE

Goebbels: Surrogate Cities (Review, en)
6/2000, Andrew Clements, BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

Schwindelerregende Techniken (Review, de)
Die Stadt als musikalische Landschaft
31 May 2000, Patrik Landolt, Die Wochenzeitung

Untitled (Review, en)
19 May 2000, Andrew Clements, The Guardian

Les formes d'une ville (Review, fr)
5/2000, David Sanson, Classica

Untitled (Review, de)
5/2000, Guido Fischer, Jazzthetik

Related Works

Argia
Die Städte und die Toten 4, 1994
Composition for Orchestra

Suite for Sampler and Orchestra
from Surrogate Cities, 1994
Composition for Orchestra

Surrogate
with words by Hugo Hamilton, 1994
Composition for Orchestra

Die Faust im Wappen
1994
Composition for Orchestra

In the Country of Last Things
with words by Paul Auster, 1994
Composition for Orchestra

D & C
1994
Composition for Orchestra

Surrogate Cities
1994
Composition for Orchestra

Samplersuite
Ensemble version, 1994
Composition for Ensemble

Surrogate
Ensemble version, 1994
Composition for Ensemble

In the Country of last things
Ensemble version, 1994
Composition for Ensemble

The Horatian - Three Songs
with words by Heiner Müller, 1994
Composition for Orchestra

The Horatian - Three Songs
Ensemble version, 1999
Composition for Ensemble

Surrogate Cities Venezia
2005
Music Theatre

The Italian Concerto
Heiner Goebbels, 2009
CD