Tamara Friebel: Illuminations

Space plays a central role in the work of Australian sound artist Tamara Friebel. Friebel studied composition with Chaya Czernowin, as well as architecture with Zaha Hadid, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Graz. Illuminations was commissioned as part of a collaboration between the Imago Dei Festival and the Carinthian Summer Music Festival. The starting point for the composition was the architecture of the Friars Minor Conventual Church Krems – Friebel derived the musical structures of the score from the specific proportions of the space and translated them into a twelve-part choir. From the manifest of the centuries-old church walls she distilled latent structures, which she in turn transformed into manifest note material. The textual leitmotif is the search for light and enlightenment, which is expressed in the setting of the words of mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen or Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya reflecting mantras and goddess names. First heard in March 2022 in the Friars Minor Conventual Church Krems, the work will be performed again at the Carinthian Summer Music Festival 2023 with an addition tailored to the Abbey Church in Ossiach.