Chroma (II)

Rebecca Saunders: Chroma I–XXII (2003–25)

Ensemble Musikfabrik
Rebecca Saunders (Leitung / Direction)
Lukas Becker (Assistenz / Assistance)

Chroma by Rebecca Saunders is a remarkable composition in many respects: spatial music, music of change, mobile, collage, simultaneous chamber music and fluid sound sculpture all in one. Above all, however, Chroma is a piece in and for the here and now, which is rearranged by the composer for each room in which it is performed. For the closing concert of the Darmstadt Summer Course 2025, Rebecca Saunders explored the venues of the Justus Liebig Haus, which was built in the mid-1960s, and created a version of Chroma that takes this special space into account. Here, too, the composer asks herself: “How much music can the space bear? When is it saturated? How do I create transparency? Where does silence find its place?”

In the current version, which was created between 2003 and 2021, the piece consists of 22 miniatures that were composed one after the other and also serve as the basic framework for the Darmstadt performance with the ensemble Musikfabrik from Cologne. From this rich fund of duos, trios, over 100 music boxes and an old portable record player, a new Chroma is created that connects the rooms of the Justus-Liebig-Haus with each other, brings them into acoustic contact and makes them vibrate, thus creating a fascinatingly lucid nostalgia between space and sound. A room as a resonating body in the most direct sense of the word.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation