Hans Thomalla, Harmoniemusik
Harmoniemusik is an immersive musical meditation, performed by an ensemble of musicians that move around the audience, playing delicate music of subtly shifting pulses and harmonies. It’s intended as a musical “happy place,” an hour-long oasis to nourish the spirit in a challenging world.
Highlights"Harmoniemusik was written during a period of both political as well as personal grief. It is the attempt to create a ‘happy place’ for an hour, even though it can never entirely escape the experience that it tries to leave behind." - Hans Thomalla
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Notable Performances
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2025
2025
Credits
ensemble Alarm Will Sound
lighting designer Gavin Chuck
sound designer Daniel Neumann
ensemble Alarm Will Sound
lighting designer Gavin Chuck
sound designer Daniel Neumann
Beethovenfest, Bonn, DE
2022
2022
Credits
ensemble Alarm Will Sound
sound designer Daniel Neumann
ensemble Alarm Will Sound
sound designer Daniel Neumann
Chicago Premiere: Bienen School of Music, Chicago, IL
2021
2021
Credits
ensemble Northwestern Contemporary Music Ensemble
lighting designer Eric Southern
ensemble Northwestern Contemporary Music Ensemble
lighting designer Eric Southern
From the Director
I have an enduring passion for instrumental, durational journeys: a composition long enough to be an experience in and of itself, which carries the listener inexorably across what feels like a great emotional distance. Harmoniemusik is such a work.
For 60 minutes, surrounded by musicians in a darkened hall, the chaos of the world fades away, and we're immersed in Hans's harmony. The music reflects Hans's wide-ranging passions—the cleanness of Reich, the sonic specificity of Lachenmann, the boundlessness of a James Turrell installation—but Hans has created something profound here that is entirely its own, something which takes me deeper in each time I encounter it. There is a great sensitivity to the tiniest details: the subtly changing sound of a repeated marimba note as the player shifts his finger across the bar, the shift in violin color when the bow moves further down the fingerboard, the change in feel of a repeating pattern as off-beat becomes on-beat. And there is this razor-fine balance between inevitability — the way each event feels like it comes necessarily from what happened before — and the unexpected. It’s a joy to bring Hans’s vision to life with an audience, attending with care to all of the details — not just all of the musical subtlety, but the staging and lighting as well — needed to take each audience on this journey.
For 60 minutes, surrounded by musicians in a darkened hall, the chaos of the world fades away, and we're immersed in Hans's harmony. The music reflects Hans's wide-ranging passions—the cleanness of Reich, the sonic specificity of Lachenmann, the boundlessness of a James Turrell installation—but Hans has created something profound here that is entirely its own, something which takes me deeper in each time I encounter it. There is a great sensitivity to the tiniest details: the subtly changing sound of a repeated marimba note as the player shifts his finger across the bar, the shift in violin color when the bow moves further down the fingerboard, the change in feel of a repeating pattern as off-beat becomes on-beat. And there is this razor-fine balance between inevitability — the way each event feels like it comes necessarily from what happened before — and the unexpected. It’s a joy to bring Hans’s vision to life with an audience, attending with care to all of the details — not just all of the musical subtlety, but the staging and lighting as well — needed to take each audience on this journey.
Credits
composer Hans Thomalla
conductor Alan Pierson
conductor Alan Pierson