Enno Poppe looks for the most elementary particle of the drum kit #novembermusic

The drum kit is pop music's most important instrument. German composer Enno Poppe, who grew up without pop music, has a fascination for percussion. A new work can be heard during November Music this year: Streik. Composed for 10 drums. I spoke to the 1969-born composer about this work and his inspiration. Listen to the podcast: 

What immediately struck me was that, as a child of the seventies, he was exclusively into classical and composed music from his earliest childhood. So by the age of 10, he was already making an avant-garde work, at an age when peers might have just been ready for very different things. His first avant-garde work was already made in a freedom that he would later develop further. 

"Improvised music didn't interest me even then. I was fascinated by the way a written score could be transformed into sound. I also prefer not to talk about style, but about technique. I am immensely intrigued by technique, and am always looking for the smallest elementary particle of a tone. From there, I let it grow."

Music as a tree

"So for example in this piece, I start over and over again. So I start very simply by just playing one beat all together. Those beats start to develop into something like in nature trees grow and get bigger and bigger and bigger. They don't get smaller again. So this is just a normal process where things get more and more complex. Then, to keep it interesting as music, I always choose a way where I start again. So I have the first growth and then I start at another point and let it grow even more and then start again."

Freedom 

In this talk, Eno Poppe makes a case for pure artistic freedom. For him, this is an inherently political statement. He argues that artists should fight for the autonomy of art, free from external pressure to convey a specific message or serve a particular purpose: "Here is the idea that music and art should always have a message or help or be political or whatever. I think it's already political to be free and to really fight for art not to be there to do something else. So just fighting for autonomy is absolutely political because freedom in art is a kind of freedom in the world, like it's a totally democratic thing."