Philipp Maintz commence ses études de composition en 1993 avec Michael Reudenbach, les poursuit avec Robert HP Platz au conservatoire de Maastricht en 1997 et obtient un Master’s Degree avec mention en 2003. De 2003 à 2005, il est élève de Karlheinz Essl au Studio For Advanced Music and Media Technology de la Anton-Bruckner-Privatuniversität à Linz (Autriche). Parallèlement, il suit des cours au CRFMW (Centre de Recherches et de Formations Musicales de Wallonie) à l’Université de Liège et participe au Stage de Composition et d’Informatique Musicale de l’IRCAM. Le Künstlerhof Schreyahn en Allemagne l’invite en tant que compositeur en résidence en 2004.
Il reçoit de nombreuses récompenses, notamment une bourse des cours d’été de Darmstadt en 2002, une mention honorable au festival Gaudeamus d’Amsterdam (2002) et une bourse de la Ernst von Siemens-Musikstiftung (2005).
Les oeuvres de Philipp Maintz sont interprétées par le Quatuor Arditti, le Quatuor Zephyr, l’Ensemble InterContemporain, le Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, L’ensemble’88, l’Ensemble IXION, l’Ensemble Intégrales ainsi que par l’Orchestre de la Radio du SWR Stuttgart et l’Orchestre Symphonique de la BBC. Elles sont présentes dans les festivals tels que International Gaudeamus Musik Week (Amsterdam), Rheinisches Musikfest (Cologne), tremplin et Agora (Paris), musica (Strasbourg), le Festival de Salzbourg, Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt), Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik et Wien Modern.
Philipp Maintz vit actuellement à Berlin.
WORLD PREMIERE
April 27th 2010 – Biennale rur Neues Musiktheater - Aachen, Germany - Aachen Symphony orchestra - Marcus R Bosch, cond. - Georges Delnon / Joachim Rathke, control room- Roland Aaeschlimann, scenery.
NOTES
Opera in seven paintings according to the Maldoror’ songs written by Count of Lautréamont.
Thomas Fiedler's notebook.
Otto Katzameier • Lautréamont (bass-baritone)
Martin Berner • Maldoror (baritone)
Marisol Montalvo • soprano voice (soprano)
Leila Pfister • the mother (mezzosoprano)
Lasse Penttinen • the father (tenor)
Julius Schneider • the child (child's voice)
The poems of the Argentinian poet Roberto Juarroz are explorations of the unknown, portraying with powerful images the vastness, waters and continents, coordinates as it were into infinity and glimpses into the vertical of the abyss. Questions to Philipp Maintz.
What is it about Juarroz's poetry which interests and inspires you to compose?
Philipp Maintz : With Juarroz it was as it so often is: first of all the poem strikes a chord on first encounter, allows me to imagine a music. On top of that, I liked the quasi-musical form very much: in the first two poems I read something like antitheses, the third bundles these together, draws conclusions and implies something more than the first two. In addition I found a whole range of possibilites for making cross-connections. The music is structured as a triptych, like the group of poems: here there are two large "wings" on the outside and a fast, light, bright centrepiece in the middle.
How do you treat the voice? You're composing for Marisol Montalvo again who sang in your opera Maldoror. Is there a connection between the vocal writing and this text in particular?
Philipp Maintz : To some extent it influenced the formal conception. I established that in the process of working, there is a quite unique amalgam which results from inspiration drawn from the text, but also from imagining her voice and formal considerations. The music and the form of the piece emerged clearly from me one day, as if emerging from the mist. Interestingly enough this is also what Juarroz's triptych describes - the coming into being of our horizon, the constitution of "feeling", which brings us to the musical implications of the text.
Composing for orchestra with voice has particular challenges. How do you treat the orchestra, particularly after your experience with the opera Maldoror and the baritone scene Wenn Steine sich zum Himmel stauen ... ?
Philipp Maintz : The opera was a kind of revelation for me, in which much came about intuitively, and succeeded. In the composition based on Chlebnikov I was particularly concerned with writing a very transparent orchestral texture. I also noticed that a certain lack of synchronisation between the voice and the orchestral "commentary" can be very attractive. In places I have now consciously distanced the orchestra from the soprano. From time to time this has a very particular intensifying effect. When I repeatedly intervene in the "focus" in the relationship of soprano and orchestra, quite different perspectival relationships between "cause" (that is the text, sung by the soprano) and effect (its "resonance" in the orchestra) are created, which in turn considerably affect the process of the constitution of meaning.
Is there an overall cyclical idea, or are the songs independent of each other?
Philipp Maintz : There is musical material which is passed on and also developed further. A conscious drawing on earlier material (that is, quasi cross-references) seems to me to be rather restricting in the flow. The first and the second songs almost merge into one, although vou can hear a gap. The second develops from the reverberation of the first. The third begins with a very clear break, recreates a tonal landscape which had already existed in the first - and then turns in a completely different direction ...(from [t]akte 1/2014)
The title contains a poetic image for a game of sounds: as if the orchestra is balanced on the narrow rim of the solo sound. In the four movements particular moments are repeatedly brought into focus and interleaved together. Upon a moment’s shallow rim is a homage to the colourful cantabile quality of the cello and to the artistry of the virtuoso. Alban Gerhardt is the soloist at the premiere in the Meistersingerhalle with the Staatsphilharmonie Nuremberg, conducted by Marcus R. Bosch.