Mit dem Hören komponieren Kombinationstöne in der Musik von Enno Poppe

The contribution focuses on Enno Poppe’s Speicher VI. I contextualize the use of non-linear distortions (combination tones) in this piece, using the histories of musicology and experimental research in physiology. For this, I refer to concepts of imagination and anticipation, as developed by music theorist Hugo Riemann and conductor Hermann Scherchen, as well as to Hermann von Helmholtz’s research in auditory physiology. Against this background I analyze three levels of constructing musical coherence in Speicher VI. Combination tones intrude the listeners’ bodies, while at the same time creating a sense of familiarity with the physical phenomenon. On a second level, this encounter affects the memory of previous motivic and sonic developments. A third level concerns semantic associations that each listener constructs according to her own experience. I argue that, through this mode of working with the actualization of sound that shapes the sound’s virtual presence, Poppe’s music offers the listener a specific mode of communicating with its sounds.