Georges Lentz is a contemporarycomposer and sound artist, born in Luxembourg in 1965 and that country's internationally best known composer.[1] Since 1990, he has been living in Sydney, Australia. Despite his relatively small output and his reclusiveness, he is also considered one of Australia's leading composers.[2] His music is inspired by the starry night sky in the Australian Outback and by Aboriginal art.
Being given to self-doubt and reclusiveness, Lentz rarely publishes new works and rarely accepts commissions. He is said to retire to an abbey (Clervaux Abbey in Luxembourg) or the Australian desert to find inspiration and compose, and only very rarely gives interviews. Lentz didn't attend the 2009APRAClassical Music Awards ceremony at the Sydney Opera House to accept that year's top prize for Best Composition by an Australian Composer, instead sending guitarist friend Zane Banks to pick up the award and read out his acceptance speech (21 September 2009).[3] A 40-minute documentary about the birth of Ingwe which appeared on YouTube in May 2010 shows Lentz for a total of about 30 seconds. In May 2022, the following note appeared on the composer's website: "About a year ago, I was persuaded to agree to interviews in the lead-up to the opening of the new Cobar Sound Chapel. I have pushed myself to go along with media requests I was very uncomfortable with. This has led me to a state of total mental exhaustion. I therefore regret to say there will be no more interviews."[4]
In January 2015, a new orchestral work, Jerusalem (after Blake), taking its inspiration from Jerusalem by William Blake, was premiered by the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. In May 2015, a portrait concert of Lentz's music by the Munich Chamber Orchestra at the Pinakothek der Moderne included the world premiere of the definitive version of Birrung (1997–2014) for 11 strings. In November 2016, the final version of Jerusalem was premiered at Wien Modern.
In April 2022, a major new sound art project, the Cobar Sound Chapel, opened in Cobar in OutbackNew South Wales. It is a purpose-built venue to permanently house the 4-channel projection of Lentz's digital string quartet, the 372-minute / 24 hour composition String Quartet(s) (2000–2022), as well as the venue for a new annual String Quartet Festival Weekend. The Cobar Sound Chapel was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Australian architect Glenn Murcutt in collaboration with the composer, with its architecture reflecting rhythmic and structural patterns found in String Quartet(s).[6][7][8][9]
A new violin concerto, "...to beam in distant heavens...", was premiered to great acclaim by German soloist Arabella Steinbacher with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House in April 2023.[4][10]
Lentz's music expresses his fascination with astronomy as well as his love of the Australian Outback and Aboriginal art (in particular the works of Kathleen Petyarre), and reflects his spiritual and existential beliefs, questions and doubts.
The Vale of Glamorgan Festival (UK), where Lentz was a featured composer in 2006, introduced his music as "...an awestruck and almost fearful response to the beauties and mysteries of the universe; a massive, personal creative undertaking from which this intense, almost obsessive composer is painstakingly extracting concert works...a unique voice whose music is genuinely moving despite its brittle austerity and unearthliness, and captures some of the most evocative silences imaginable."
Lentz's music shows the influence of the French Spectralists and, to some degree, the New Complexity movement (unusual instrumental combinations, extended playing techniques etc.). It is often soft, fluctuates between polyphonic intricacy and fragile monody and sometimes contains extended silences.
Lentz's scores of recent years (Mysterium) are written in an unusual rhythmic system, where each bar contains four beats, but the beats can be of different lengths. While it is not clear why Lentz has adopted this idiosyncratic system, the textures and colours (occasionally with delicate layers of computer-generated sounds) superimposed over the top of these rigid "grids" often give it a shimmering or 'twinkling' quality.
Another feature particularly of his orchestral works is a sense of harmony incorporating both microtonality and, now and then, an austere sense of 'twisted' tonality, with the occasional harmonic progression fleetingly reminiscent of Schumann or Bruckner. However, these chorale-like fragments are always brief and buried in the texture of the music, giving the impression of something "long forgotten".
Ingwe is a 60-minute work for solo electric guitar, possibly the longest solo composition ever written for the instrument.[11] It contrasts sharply, in many ways, with Lentz's prior music and takes the electric guitar into dimensions previously unexplored in a 'classical' context. Ingwe also contains, for the first time in Lentz's output, a short section that relinquishes strict control over the musical material and gives some improvisational freedom to the performer.
In the final analysis Lentz's music, born from "total silence and radical isolation – at the very real risk of hearing nothing at all" (composer's website), seems to be torn between feelings of awe and an over-riding struggle with spiritual doubt and existential loneliness.
Principal works
Caeli enarrant... (1989 to date)
Part
Subtitle
Year
Instrumentation
Duration
I
1989–1998
orchestra
40 min.
III
1990–2000
12 strings, 3 percussionists, 1 boy soprano
14 min.
IV
1991–2000
string quartet, 4 suspended cymbals
27 min.
V
1989–1992
prepared piano
10 min.
VII Mysterium
Birrung
1997–2014
11 strings
13 min.
Ngangkar
1998–2000
orchestra
14 min.
Nguurraa
2000–2016
clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and piano
11min.
Guyuhmgan
2000–2007
orchestra and electronics
18 min.
Alkere
2002–2013
prepared piano
12 min.
Monh
2001–2005
solo viola, orchestra and electronics
23 min.
Ingwe
2003–2018
electric guitar
60 min.
Jerusalem (after Blake)
2011–2016
orchestra and electronics
21 min.
Anyente
2019–2021
viola
10 min.
String Quartet(s)
2000–2022
pre-recorded digital string quartet (in collaboration with The Noise) / 4-channel sound installation for permanent projection in the Cobar Sound Chapel[8]
ca. 43 hours
"...to beam in distant heavens..." – Violin Concerto
2018–2023
violin and orchestra
35 min.
Recordings
•"Caeli enarrant..." III, "Caeli enarrant..." IV, Birrung & Nguurraa
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References
↑ "Lentz, Georges", in Luxemburger Lexikon, Editions Guy Binsfeld, Luxembourg, 2006. (in German)
↑ "Lentz, Georges", in New Classical Music – Composing Australia by Gordon Kerry, University of NSW Press, Australia, 2004.
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