www.floraberlin.de - Berlin - Experimental Art

"Mozartkugeln" is the name of a specific type of chocolate considered typical of Salzburg and marketed under the name of Mozart. If you spell "Mozart kugeln" with a space between the parts of the word, such as in the title of this piece, it means something like "rolling Mozart around on the floor". This piece aims at literally doing what the pun implies.

Twelve key parts are taken from any piece by Mozart and assigned (in mono) to twelve samples. The decision about which parts should be considered key parts is made by the performer. All the elements should be very short, e.g. single tones, preferably shorter than a recognizable musical pattern, and no longer than five seconds each. The performance shall explore how the reduction of a sophisticated composition to its smallest components and the recombination of these components can help to develop a new form of focused listening that dicovers musical richness not only in musical macrostructures, but also by concentrating on small acoustic elements.

The key parts can be recorded by playing them live from a score, or by sampling readily available recordings, radio or television broadcasts of Mozart's works. As the elements are supposed to very short, no copyright problems should arise even under the current copyright regime. Sampling already existing recordings is even better in that it can serve as a basis for discussing the virtual omnipresence of the classical canon brought about by CDs etc.

The duration of the piece is based on the dates of Mozart's birth and death (27/01/1756-05/12/1791) and their relation to the date of performance. For the audio clip on this website, the performance of samples 9 to 12 was based on the date 19/05/2006. This is the day on which the piece was performed at Junges Theater Augsburg. The audio clip is taken from the playback CD that was used for this performance.

Sample 1   is performed 17 times, then it continues and
Sample 2   is performed 56 times, then it continues and
Sample 3   is performed 1 time, then it continues and
Sample 4   is performed 27 times and then

Sample 1, 2, 3, 4 are set to "reverse" and then

Sample 5   is performed 17 times, then it continues and
Sample 6   is performed 91 times, then it continues and
Sample 7   is performed 12 times, then it continues and
Sample 8   is performed 5 times, then it continues and then

Sample 6, 5, 8, 7 are set to "reverse" and then

Sample 9     is performed 20 times, then it continues and
Sample 10   is performed 6 times, then it continues and
Sample 11   is performed 5 times, then it continues and
Sample 12   is performed 19 times, then it continues and then

Sample 12, 11, 10, 9 are set to "reverse" and then

Sample 6   is deleted and
Sample 7   is deleted and
Sample 5   is deleted and
Sample 8   is deleted and
Sample 4   is deleted and
Sample 9   is deleted and
Sample 3   is deleted and
Sample 10 is deleted and
Sample 2   is deleted and
Sample 11 is deleted and
Sample 1   is deleted and
Sample 12 is deleted

During playback of the Mozart samples arranged in this way, the performer onstage unwraps "Mozartkugeln" from their tinfoil wrappers in front of a microphone connected to the sampling device and records 12 samples with the sound of tinfoil and other sounds that occur during unwrapping. Effects can be used to amplify these sounds. The audience, however, does not yet hear the sounds being recorded onstage. The chocolates as such are put aside. The audience should be able to see, though, that the performer is handling the wrappers of "Mozartkugeln". If one piece of tinfoil falls apart before the end of the performance, another piece is taken from the box to continue the performance.

As soon as the first Mozart sample on the playback CD is switched off, the tinfoil samples start getting played back to the audience at the same rate the Mozart samples are being switched off: 6, 7, 5, 8, 4, 9, 3, 10, 2, 11, 1, 12. Thus, musical bits are replaced by tinfoil noises one by one. As soon as there are only tinfoil noises left to hear, the performer audibly eats the chocolates in front of the microphone while he or she slowly fades the volume control of the sampling device out to zero. The piece ends with the unamplified sound of chewing as the performer eats the "Mozartkugeln" candies he or she has just unwrapped.

Note:
Should candy manufacturers be willing to produce similar personalised candies (Bachkugeln, Beethovenkugeln, … Kagelkugeln - rolling Bach, Beethoven … Kagel around on the floor), possibly under the terms of a sponsoring contract, this concept can be applied to the works of other composers as well.