same difference, Bernhard Gal’s eighth full length audio publication, features for the first time a selection of Gal’s compositions for traditional Chinese instruments, in conjunction with other thematically related works. The CD was conceived as a continuous, homogenous sound work: five transitions - titled ‘a thousand’, ‘times’, ‘and again’, ‘and never’, ‘the same’ - connect the individual pieces.

East Asian cultures, with their musical traditions and ways of thinking, have been of great influence in Gal’s artistic oeuvre, be it in his ongoing collaboration with the Japanese architect / installation artist Yumi Kori, in duo projects with the Taiwanese composer Tung Chao-Ming, or in composition for Chinese instruments and various electroacoustic works. Frequently, the challenges and limitations of any intercultural endeavour are addressed or ironically reflected: Western avantgarde concepts merge with the sound colours of traditional Chinese instruments (Of Sound and Time), the potential of a ‘hybrid’ quartet constellation is tested (vür vier), sounds of the Chinese zither guzheng and the Chinese mouth organ sheng are interwoven with their electroacoustic derivatives within a space-oriented concert installation (uh-jeh-gal), and a ‘musical’ sauna session is combined with the airy sounds of the Chinese bamboo whistle koudi (in fusion). In UTOO, the delicate instrumental overlay of a Berlin subway ride might find its equivalent in the abstractions of contemporary Chinese bamboo painting. The ‘eternal same’ is explored in six (nearly) equally tuned guitar strings (e-musik), the ‘eternal other’ is meditated upon in circular movements of singing wine glasses (xuan zhuan).

Press release (pdf, english)

Fast schon entschuldigend schreibt der österreichische Klangkünstler Bernhard Gal in seinem aktuellen Newsletter mit Hinweis auf sein laufendes PhD-Forschungsprojekt vom Rückgang seiner Aktitväten, nur um dann im Folgenden doch fünf Konzerttermine anzukündigen. Was ist bei dem Mann los, wenn er keine Doktorarbeit schreibt ?! same difference versammelt einige Arbeiten von Bernhard Gal aus den letzten Jahren, die in zweierlei Hinsicht besonders sind. Erstens zeigen sie hier den Instrumental-Komponisten Gal, der Werke für Ensembles vorgelegt hat; ein großer Sprung, wenn man an die Klanginstallationen und Fieldrecordings denkt. Zweitens versuchen einige Stücke auf same difference (mit Erfolg!) einen echte musikalische Synthese aus verschiedensten Materialien zu schaffen. Traditionelles chinesisches Instrumentarium (Sheng, Guzheng) wird mit Elektronik verknüpft, nicht bearbeitet, sondern in einen Dialog gebracht. Verbindend zwischen den verschiedenen Werken hat Gal kurze elektronische/konkrete Miniaturen platziert, die das Thema der Zusammenführung in der Sequenz der CD ebenfalls unterstreichen. Manches wirkt etwas streng und auch kontrolliert, dafür arbeitet Gal aber immer sehr genau und konzentriert und verwischt nichts. Vom Stück mit singenden Weingläsern bis hin zur Sauna-Session über Werke für Ensembles oder Akustikgitarre wird um jeden Ton gerungen, wird jeder Klang effektvoll montiert und arangiert. Eine spannende CD.

[Zipo, Auf Abwegen, Germany, 01/2013]

Die mittlerweile achte CD des Wiener Klangkünstlers Bernhard Gál versteht sich als „full length audio publication“. Sehr stimmig ist der gewählte Zugang mit traditionellen chinesischen Instrumenten wie Zither oder Mundorgel zu arbeiten und als interkulturelle Zusammenarbeit mit taiwanesischen und japanischen Künstlerinnen zu einem homogenen Audiostream zu verdichten. „same difference“ ist eine elektroakustische Meditation, die man mit einem schelmischen Seitenblick zu György Ligeti stellenweise auch als „Lontano für singende Weingläser und Bambuspfeifen“ bezeichnen könnte. Je stärker die asiatischen Ingredienzien in den einzelnen Stücken zum Tragen kommen, umso überzeugender wird „same difference“. Stellt sich natürlich die Frage, ob das an der Exotik der Instrumentierung liegt oder ob man das als kompositorisches Verdienst verbuchen darf? Aber diese Frage wollen wir als zenbuddhistischen Koan verstanden wissen. CD einlegen und darüber in immer tiefer kreisenden Gedankengängen endlos meditieren. Uneingeschränkt empfehlenswert (also auch für E-Musik-Muffel) ist jedenfalls der Besuch einer Live-Installation von Bernhard Gál.

[Curt Cuisine, Skug, Austria, 07/2011]

Gal kommentiert:
Bin mir nicht sicher, ob sich der Autor die CD auch wirklich mal von vorne bis hinten durchgehört hat (da auf einzelne Werke nicht näher eingegangen wird), aber danke jedenfalls für die Blumen! "Japanische" Einflüsse sind eventuell hier und da atmosphärisch vorzufinden, jedoch sind in keinem der Werke Japaner involviert (nur um dies klarzustellen). Habe mir Ligetis Lontano mal angehört, und finde - wenigstens in den ersten 60 Sekunden des Werkes - gewisse klangliche Parallelen zu den Weingläsern (xuan zhuan) - interessanter Hinweis, danke! Schräg finde ich den Begriff "Live-Installation" - was damit wohl gemeint sein soll? Welche Kompositionen der CD besser oder schlechter gefallen, hängt wohl einerseits mit der jeweiligen Erwartungshaltung (m)einer sehr heterogenen Hörerschaft, und andererseits der tatsächlich sehr grossen stilistischen Bandbreite der hier präsentierten Musik zusammen. Des einen Fisch ist eben des anderen Fleisch, scheint es...

[Massimo Ricci, Paris Transatlantic, France, 03/2011]

Bernhard Gal is a musician/composer/sound artist who has apparently now released eight albums. I think I own maybe half of these, but even now if pressed I’m not sure I could really describe his work quickly and easily, which is probably a good thing. I really enjoyed (if enjoy is the right word to describe listening to an album based on the work of the schizophrenic art brut artist Adolf Wölfli) his 2004 album In Hinaus:: In den, Wald but have been out of touch with most of the rest of his solo work since that release. So it was pleasing to receive his new album Same Difference recently.

This album contains a dozen tracks that each reflect and involve Eastern aesthetics and instrumentation in their composition. Written and recorded over the best part of a decade, the pieces here are all assembled on a computer, many of them involving field recordings, often in one processed state or another, but at the heart of most of them lies traditional Chinese instrumentation. All of the tracks have an ‘Eastern’ feel to them, sometimes in a really direct, obvious way and elsewhere only in slight feeling. A lot of thought and preparation went into many of the works. The third (and at twenty minutes plus the longest) track here Uh-jeh-gal, which was commissioned by and performed at a Viennese concert hall in 2004 blends recordings of musicians playing the sheng and zheng with live performances using the same instruments and live electronics, but the positioning of each musician in relation to the speakers is carefully planned in relation to a score that also admits improvisation. The resulting recording presented here is rather nice, a strange blend of the traditional and the contemporary as the obviously traditional sounds of the sheng (some kind of Chinese mouth organ) and the zeng (a Chinese zither) often blend seamlessly into the sheets of electronic sound as if they always have.

E-Musik is a solo guitar piece played by Gal that carries far less obvious Eastern attachment, but reflects a kind of focussed simplicity in its repeatedly plucked notes and wavering chords as the guitar responds to its unusual microtonally tuned strings, all in E spread across two octaves so we hear one note, but with varying frequencies and imperfections with each strum of the instrument. Across the other pieces here none take quite the same simple approach as this track, which does seem (to me at least) to be the closest the album comes to sounding fluently Asian in its approach without having the slightly theatrical feel that the collisions of instrumentation have in some of the other pieces.

Vür fier is scored for trumpet, (played here by Franz Hautzinger) and Guitar (Burkhard Stangl) alongside guzheng, sheng and xun. The composition allows for a fair degree of interpretation and freedom for the musicians, and this can be heard in the music, which begins very slowly and builds into little dramatic crescendoes. The music feels like two sets of musicians from differing backgrounds improvising along an Eastern theme and avoiding modern phrasing and/or Western improvisational clichés. There are some lovely moments in there, particularly when a deep booming gong (no idea who is playing it) appears from time to time, but at other points it feels a bit forced and awkward, but that could just be my prejudice as a listener to one form of music and not the other.

Threaded through the tracks here are five short works that are described in the extensive liner notes as ‘transitions’. Their titles, when all put together spell out the line ‘A thousand times, and again, and never, the same‘. The first three of these are vocal recordings of Chinese and Taiwanese voices captured in different places, but the last couple, described as soundscapes, but I’m not sure what of are quite lovely little grey fragments of next-to-nothingness that I would have liked to have heard extended beyond the thirty seconds or so they last here.

Of the other pieces here, Xuan zhuan is an electroacoustic composition of singing wine glasses and bowed crotales that reflects upon the notation of rotation. Some nice colours and combinations of them can be heard in the layered sounds here, but at fifteen minutes it wears thin after a while. The closing track is subtly done, a straight acoustic recording of Gal playing, in a very slight, restrained manner, a Chinese bamboo flute in a sauna, as he also throws water onto the hot sauna stones, so matching his soft whistles with sudden bursts of hissing steam exhalations. A nice, intimate little piece.

My favourite track here though may well be the least ‘Eastern’ of all of them however. UTOO sees a recording of the Berlin subway responded to by an eight piece chamber orchestra (playing I believe traditional Western instruments). The musicians are asked to search for corresponding colours to the dark rumbles, shuffling and distant muffled tannoy announcements and they do this beautifully- all textured, shifting murmurs and muted strings and percussion.

Same Difference is an album that I grew to enjoy more and more as I played it several times over. There are parts that don’t work as well for me as others, but that is often the nature of an album recorded over such a wide spread of time. When it does work though, as it does on several occasions it can be really rather beautiful, and these parts are worth the entrance price alone. Released on the Gromoga label, which would appear to be Gal’s own new imprint.

[Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear, UK, 01/2011]

ovvero: il trionfo del buon gusto

Bernhard Gál è uno dei musicisti più eleganti, e ovviamente non mi sto riferendo al look, fra quelli attivi nella scena elettro-elettronica. Qualità e costanza, unite ad una seria attività di ricerca, fanno sì che si stia affermando come uno dei nomi più importanti di questo inizio secolo, e la mia convinzione è confermata dal fatto che all’estero il suo apporto è fra i più graditi nelle rassegne, nei workshop e nelle installazioni (non in Italia, naturalmente, paese afflitto da demenza senile dove rifrullano sempre i soliti ‘noti’).

Con questo disco Gál realizza una delle sue opere più interessanti (assieme a “Bestimmung New York”, “Relisten” e “Hinaus: In den, Wald”). Gli otto brani (a thousand, times, and again, and never e the same sono da considerare come un’unica composizione i cui frammenti vanno a calarsi negli interstizi fra gli altri brani fungendo un po’ da collante per una serie di composizioni non espressamente studiate per questo disco) presentano tipologie esecutive affatto diverse, ma rispondono ad una forma estetica piuttosto accomunabile.

Xuán zhuan e uh-jeh-gal, rispettivamente 15 e 20 minuti di durata, rappresentano i punti di forza del disco. Nel primo l’autore si cimenta con bicchieri da vino e piccoli cimbali suonati con l’archetto, ottenendo così quelle modulazioni in continuum tipiche di strumenti come la glass armonica o come refoli di vento che giocano all’interno di recipienti di vetro. Uh-jeh-gal è un brano in collaborazione con gli strumentisti cinesi Wu Wei (l’organo a bocca sheng) e Yeh Jiuan-Reng (la cetra zheng), ed è proprio dalla pronuncia del cognome dei tre (wu-yeh-gal) che prende forma il titolo. La registrazione proviene da una installazione commissionata dalla Wiener Konzerthaus e il connubio fra il suono dei due strumenti e l’intervento dell’austriaco (che si è occupato della propagazione del suono, ad iniziare dalla posizione dei musicisti per arrivare a quella dei diffusori) porta a qualcosa di veramente magico. Peccato che il CD non sia in grado di ricreare la situazione originaria che mi immagino ancor più incantevole.

E-musik è forse il pezzo più spiazzante, dacché vede il manipolatore elettro-elettronico alle prese con uno strumento tradizionale, esattamente una chitarra. Più che una composizione lo definirei come un piccolo studio su suono, volumi e risonanze relativamente a quello strumento accordato in mi. Originariamente il brano era stato creato per una compilation di autori vari della Intransitive Records (2001), che però non lo aveva inserito in favore di un altro titolo. Vür fier è invece una composizione per un ensemble misto, esattamente un quartetto diviso equamente fra strumentisti occidentali e orientali. Tromba e chitarra da una parte e Guzheng, Sheng e Xun dall’altra. Fra gli strumentisti ci sono alcune nostre vecchie conoscenze come Franz Hautzinger, Burkhard Stangl e Xu Fengxia, oltre al cinese Wu Wei.

Ancora una scrittura per ensemble, in questo caso di solo strumenti orientali, con Of Sound and Time affidata al Chai Found Music Workshop di Taiwan. La particolarità nella rappresentazione pubblica del brano sta in tre musicisti seduti fra gli ascoltatori e destinati ad interventi sonori di disturbo. UTOO è ancora una scrittura per ensemble, precisamente per il collettivo Noamnesia di Chicago fondato da Gene Coleman (altra nostra conoscenza). In questo caso la presenza di Gál non è però solo ‘tecnica’ e/o ‘compositiva’, nell’organizzazione della diffusione, ma diretta e fisica attraverso l’utilizzo di elettroniche e registrazioni concrete (effettuate in una corsa della metropolitana a Berlino). In tre degli intermezzi è presente una voce recitante (nei dialetti cantonese e taiwanese) a dare un delizioso spiffero esotico, mentre gli altri due vengono presentati come brevi ‘soundscape’. Chiusura con In fusion, dove l’autore torna a cimentarsi in solitudine, un curioso esperimento per piffero cinese (koudi) e tinozza. Una registrazione domestica, un semplice gioco per aggiungere una spolverata di pepe a un disco che di sale ne ha comunque in abbondanza.

[Mario Biserni, Sands-Zine, Italy, 12/2010]

[Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, Netherlands, 12/2010]

Gal comments:
Hello Frans, you forgot to mention your rather enthusiastic review of my CD 'relive', written about 2 years ago... Anyway, thanks for your honest criticism, it's the kind of write-up that I really do appreciate. Given the 'very mixed' musical content of this CD, I was positively surprised that you liked at least bits of it... ;-)

...and just for the record (and maybe future reviews), my first name is Bernhard, with an 'h'.

Komponist, Installationskünstler und Musikwissenschaftler Bernhard Gál, seines Zeichens einer der vielseitigsten Klangkünstler der jüngeren Generation, präsentiert am 10. Oktober im Wiener Echoraum seine neue CD „same difference“. Hierbei handelt es sich um eine Auswahl an Kompostionen für traditionelle chinesische Instrumente sowie weiteren thematisch verwandten Werken.

Bernhard Gál ist ein vielbeschäftigter Mann. Er ist Komponist, Musikwissenschaftler, Labelbetreiber (Gromoga Records), Festivalkurator (shut up and listen!), Vereinsleiter der österreichischen Kulturinitiative „sp ce” sowie Musiker. In seiner noch jungen Karriere zeigt sich der 1971 in Wien geborene, vorwiegend transdisziplinär arbeitende Künstler für etwa 50 intermedialen Installationen und Medienkunstprojekten verantwortlich. Dass der bereits mehrfach ausgezeichnete 38-Jährige inzwischen auch international hohes Renommee geniesst, zeigen seine zahlreichen Konzerte, Ausstellungen und Klanginstallationen in Asien, Europa und Nord- und Südamerika.

In seinen elektroakustischen Arbeiten steht seit jeher die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Phänomen Klang im Mittelpunkt. Mit der Akribie eines Wissenschaftlers forscht der Bernhard Gál nach dessen Eigenschaften und Eigenheiten, nach Methoden Töne neu entstehen zu lassen, nach Möglichkeiten diese zu bearbeiten und zu verfremden, um sie schließlich in einem neuen interdisziplinären Kontext entstehen zu lassen.

„same difference“ geht vom herkömmlichen Schema einer Musik-CD deutlich ab. Vielmehr handelt es sich hier um ein Klangkunstwerk, welches aus fünf Einzelwerken besteht, die durch eigens komponierte „Zwischenspiele“ zu einem homogenen Ganzen zusammengeführt werden. Bernhard Gál schlüpft in seiner neuen Arbeit in die Rolle eines Brückenbauers zwischen zwei unterschiedlichen Kulturpositionen. Auf der einen Seite ostasiatische Musiktraditionen und Denkweisen, auf der anderen das europäisch geprägte Verständnis von zeitgenössischer Klangkunst und elektroakustischer Musik.

Als Basis für „same difference“ dienen vorwiegend Klänge chinesischer Instrumente, die von Bernhard Gál bearbeitet mit westlichen Avantgarde-Konzepten eine Verbindung eingehen. Herauskommen dabei höchst interessante farbenfrohe Klangmalereien, die in ihrer Form unmöglich einer bestimmten musikalischen Kategorie zuzuordnen sind, sondern vielmehr für sich alleine stehen. Es ist besonders der Gegensatz zwischen den verspielten, oft klischeebeladenen Klangfarben der fernöstlichen Instrumente und einer elektronisch generierten unterkühlten Atmosphäre, welche den Reiz dieser CD ausmacht. Ein Spagat, der in diesem Fall mehr als gelungen ist.

[Michael Ternai, mica, Austria, 10/2010]