From the tower to the underground

It started at three in the afternoon and ended late in the evening: music, performances and a sound installation took over Bern Minster from top to bottom. The brothers Michel and André Décosterd, known as Cod.Act, had set up one of their installations on the "Bsetzisteinen" of Münsterplatz: An individual entangled with ropes tried to free himself, with the ropes emitting different sounds depending on the pull and direction of pull.

Eight musicians from the Proton Bern ensemble played in the vaulted hall, an octagonal concert room high up in the cathedral Earth Ears: A Sonic Ritual by the American composer Pauline Oliveros. With Appel interstellaire for horn solo from the piece Du Canyon aux étoiles by Olivier Messiaen, the Olivier Darbellay Horn Quartet began its performance of works for one to four horns, most of them composed by the collective L'art pour l'Aar.

Franziska Baumann presented in Prop-hectics our relationship to virtual voices; Léa Legros Pontal approached Ligeti's viola sonata from the perspective of improvisation and Christoph Mahnig seduced with Spaces for trumpet solo for a precise acoustic exploration of his instrument and the concert hall.

Franziska Baumann in the vaulted hall of the cathedral

Werner Hasler was inspired by the chimes of the cathedral, "attached" his intervention to the sounds emanating from it, changed them imperceptibly and then sent his echo after them.

For the finale of the festival, visitors moved less than a hundred meters further into the crypt of the Church of St. Peter and Paul. In the low basement, the Kukuruz Quartet played compositions by the African-American composer Julius Eastman on four pianos, who made racism and homophobia the oppressive themes of his pieces as early as the 1970s.

Music by Julius Eastman in the crypt of the church of St. Peter and Paul