“Verstrijken for ensemble no.2” is an Installation based on eighth solo compositions for eighth musicians. Each solo piece is a musical version of a diary that each of the musicians kept for a week between June 18 and 24, 2007 at the composer’s request. Each hour of the week corresponds to 8 seconds of music. The musicians are asked to write down exactly what they did on each day of the week, for how long, and why and with what emotions they undertook various activities. Based on these texts, Engelen analyzed and compared their activities, daily routines, and rhythms. To make the day’s rhythm audible as a parameter, a number of different activities were reduced and divided into five categories: sleeping, eating, working, traveling, and leisure. Each of these categories received its specific playing and tone material. The length of the activity or category determined the length in the composition, the emotion accompanying the activity influenced how it was played.

In this composition, every musician can be heard as a soloist and at the same time in comparison with the other eight instrumentalists. The ensemble is connected by the week in which they wrote in their diaries and by their work as professional musicians. They differ in age, sex, instrument, training, place of residence, and musical direction. The individual compositions were recorded in the studio and then processed in the 8-channel sound installation, whereby each instrument can be heard separately through its own loudspeaker.

“Verstrijken für Ensemble no. 2” for MKgalerie Berlin is a reworking of “Verstrijken voor ensemble“, which had its world premiere in January 2008 in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The mobile concert room that was initially designed for the museum is adjusted to fit the rooms of the gallery. The originally large, closed concert room is deconstructed and, in parts, reassembled. In the gallery, a spatial arrangement of walls and passageways is created in which the individual instruments are separately audible and the associated large graphic scores can be read.

The catalog “Verstrijken” will be published for the opening by the Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg. The catalog contains essays by Thea Herold, Gisela Nauck, and Ludwig Seyfarth, as well as two audio CDs.

The exhibition and the catalog were made possible by the generous support of the Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving en bouwkunst, Amsterdam and of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Berlin.