LP – Edition Telemark

Sounds and visual arts, installations and performances. William Engelen is native to the Limburg region but lives and works in Berlin. After Partitur Belval, he developed his second LP, a double album for Edition Telemark named Today, the Organ has Played Beautifully Again. Developing a cross-disciplinary and conceptual aptitude, the work stresses the importance of the eponymous instrument. The track was written for an exhibition of the same name at Kunsthalle Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, Germany. In the past, the main building of this location was a Dominican Monastery, that, in 1713, hosted a pipe organ made in the famous workshop of Klausing at Herford. In 1819, after the monastery was secularised, the pipe organ was moved into the church of St. Matthäus in Melle, where today it is still played. Engelen’s job is not focused on the creation of sound spaces, but on the development of works that could resound and reflect the specific environment they are located in, so he correctly thought to “virtually” move the organ to its original location. The project shows a maniac approach not only in its complicated plan, but also in its concrete making and development. The work was presented for the first time to the audience in the church of St. Matthäus on October 14th, 2018. The video-recordings taken during the rehearsal and the concert were later used in the sound installation of the exhibition at Kunsthalle; however, what we listen to now is a work made during one night only. William Engelen worked very closely with Stephan Lutermann, the official organist of the church. With the help of an engine, Engelen reserved for himself the role of “calcant”, the man who, with his feet, started the propulsive connection of the air supply to the instrument. The sounds start from slightly audible levels to incredibly husky points and is the result of a meticulous exploration of the potentiality of expression of the instrument, which is detached from its usual usage and is the object of a second ideal translation. In comparison with some canons of church music, the sequences here are more obsessive and bare and the weaves more silent and abstract. We imagine the solemn and sober musician of St. Matthäus would have liked this aspect, happy to be catapulted into the orbit of the most tendentious and inspired contemporary music.

 

William Engelen – Today, the organ has played beautifully again