Susan Philipsz Study for Strings dOCUMENTA 13

I have asked a viola and a cello player to play their parts of Pavel Haas’s Study for String Orchestra. However I have recorded them playing each tone separately so that each tone comes from its own speaker, which I’ve installed out on the train tracks. The effect is that the composition is fragmented and scattered over a wide area. Expanding and extending the recordings into the space has the effect of abstracting the individual notes from the composition as a whole. The beginning is reminiscent of industry or the sound of trains moving along the tracks. The middle section is more melancholic with individual notes calling across to each other and finally the pizzicato seems to animate the cables above the tracks.