CD – Line
The subharchord is a rare sounding-generating device that employs subharmonic synthesis. Long-forgotten, the instrument was rediscovered in 2000 by Manfred Miersch, a Berlin artist and musician. The subharchord derives from an even more ancient instrument, the Trautonium, an equally strange “synthetic contraption” that Alfred Hitchcock used to generate the sounds for his famous “The Birds” (to be more precise, the American director used a Mixturtrautonium, an evolution of the experimental machine). We had to wait until 2007, though, before Frank Bretschneider was invited to compose music for the seminal instrument, of which only eight were built and only three survive in working order (one in Vienna, one in Trondheim and one in Berlin). Bretschneider has subverted its original use, the elaboration of effects, utilizing it in a more rhythmic way: generating alternating sine waves and creating an estranging continuum with industrial and space-age mixes. The first performance born from this research was integrated into the TESLA-Werkstatt project the same year and was soon followed by another exhibition at the Wien Modern Festival. In 2011, for the SoundExchange concerts, Bretschneider was asked to revisit and extend his work, adding in new recordings that became eight different full-bodied and imaginative scores in this release for Line.