ABSTRACT
The tension ingrained in lachenmann's music is that its frustration of conventional expectations leaves the listener somewhat disoriented, and yet precisely this lack of familiarity creates the potential for sonorities to impact directly on the ear. Helmut Lachenmann and Wolfgang Rihm might be seen as antipodes because the former resisted traditional means of expression and engaged with a serial aesthetic, while the latter fostered an aesthetic of inclusion, partly as a way of detaching himself from the established post-war avant-gardes. And yet Lachenmann's emphasis on the physicality of sounds, the ways in which they are produced and what he calls "broken magic' is not at all compatible with a serialism's formalist preoccupations. Even though Rihm does not generally deploy extended techniques, he shares with Lachenmann an interest in presenting musical objects in unconventional ways; in addition, his emphasis on the placing and production of an instrumental sound is congruent with Lachenmann's aesthetic.
