Mia Schmidt: Nun Nacht

for overtone singer, quarter-tone harpsichord, marimba and choir

(2021)

Nun Nacht is a sound poem that incorporates various aspects of the experience of the night, the dreamy, mysterious night, but also the eerie, irrational or rationally frightening night. The work is not based on a specific text or poem. It is mainly vowels and their colorations (with echoes of overtone singing) as well as individual consonants and phonemes that are sung. These are derived from the words Nacht, notte, nuit and night.

The form is based on the sonnet form of poetry, but consists of seven parts rather than four stanzas. Stanzas I, III, VI and VII each have three verses (3 x 11 syllables), while stanzas II, IV and V each have four verses (4 x 11). The stanzas or parts of the form differ in gesture: the night in its beauty versus the night in anxiety, uncertainty and fear. The verse meter with its characteristic eleven syllables is echoed in the time units and rhythmic movements.

Harmonically, I limit myself to five chords, derived from overtone spectra, and their transpositions to B, C, C sharp, D, E and B flat.

The sound of the overtone singer, which I find magical, is mainly used in the quiet parts.

Mia Schmidt

Mia Schmidt (*1952 in Dresden), who initially completed studies in social pedagogy and music and cultural studies, studied composition with Milko Kelemen in Stuttgart and Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough and Mesias Maiguashca in Freiburg. She has received international prizes, scholarships and composition commissions. In addition to major music theater works, she has composed chamber music, orchestral music, choral works, electronic works, film music and installations. Mia Schmidt has a grown-up daughter and has been married to the composer Wolfgang Motz since 2006. She is a federal advisory board member for music in the GEDOK.

»My work is committed to the contemporary electronic music of the last five decades with a certain joy of experimentation, but I am also constantly searching for music that could be understood by a wider audience. My compositional technique is based, among other things, on the use of overtone spectra, which I also use as modes. I have reduced the microtonality to quarter tones and timbres. This results in sounds that are sometimes reminiscent of tonal chords in terms of chord structure and degree of consonance, but without using tonal grammar.«

Mia Schmidt

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Mia Schmidt: Nun Nacht

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