Sven Ingo Koch: Simple Songs & Lieder des Verzehrens

1 mulberries
2 fennel
3 marten
4 bird grave song
5 match

To write songs, to compose vocal music, has been my desire for many years. However, I did not want to rely on those procedures and forms of expression that are otherwise important to me in my melodic work: I ruled out a »heterochronicity« of simultaneous levels and melodic lines composed in eighth tones with a view to the instrumentation at the beginning of the working process. In this restriction lay at the same time the attraction to move in the direction of »song« in some songs.

Heterogeneity arises in this small cycle through the juxtaposition of contrasting songs, or rather songs that mutually perspectivize each other in their difference. The formal arrangement of the songs follows the intensity of the sung forms of consumption: from the yearning eating of mulberries and fennel to the bloodlust of the marten »uncorking« the pigeons, to the birds feasting on human bodies, to the metaphorical match burning itself (and its time).
Simple Songs & Songs of Consumption are dedicated to Viktoriia Vitrenko.
Sven-Ingo Koch