After finishing my work on MUGL ENTSTEIGT, I wanted to do something new with restricted material and under restricted formal aspects. At that time I was living in an ancient castle from the 12th century. Many generations of people had left their traces in this building. One of these traces were nails. Nails everywhere: in the walls, on the floor, in the doorposts, in the window frames, in the furniture - each of them sounding different and telling its individual story. They inspired me to build two 'nail-fiddels': circels of nails in a piece of wood, which can be played with a bow. I found two different tunings appropriate, one with 7 steps per octave, and one with 8.
Recordings of these simple instruments were the only material for the whole piece. In addition to the standard methods of producing sound (plucking and playing with a bow) I made a bow with sandpaper instead of hair. With this tool I got all those exciting granular sounds, you can hear in the piece.
At the same time I discovered logarithms of whole number fractions as a method to build very natural rhythms and duration series, that do not depend on any synchronizing beat. At the beginning two melodies introduce a narrative level. From this level the listener is lead step by step into a tale (without words) about things happened long, long ago: a fairytale.
There is a series of slides by Renate Porstendorfer, which adds an optical dimension to this imaginary story.
Günther Rabl

high resolution copy on request, please ask for details.

fotos: © Renate Porstendorfer