TANZ MIT DEN ELEMENTEN - ERDEN

Die Erdenklangstrasse
"Dance with the Elements"
Music and sculptures on the way to silence

in 59889 Eslohe-Wenholthausen/Germany
Habbeckestrasse 18
telefon: ++49 (0) 2973 2088

"Erdenklangstrasse ("Sounds of the Earth-Street"), a sound installation to sensitize the senses, installed in the open countryside at the "Erdenklang House". It is now being complemented by four sculptures by artist BETTINA HEGENER. A sound landscape becomes a place for reflection and self-contemplation and aims to heal our overstrained senses.
Influenced by the landscape here and the preliminary drafts of the music produced in-house for this project, the Wenholthausen artist and sculptress Bettina Hegener has created four 1.50 metre high sculptures from concrete and wood which have now been installed.

The sculptures can be purchased individually or together as one object.
Bettina Hegener's residence is situated down below in the village of Wenholthausen at Südstrasse 25 in "Tiger Garden" - Tel. 02973 1774 email: galerie@tigergarten.de

"Dance With The Elements" is change, growth, development. Dance with the wind, open like a bud, give oneself up to flowing forces or cultivate new impulses in shaded concealment: the sensitivity of man is just like nature, constantly growing.
The materiality of the sculptures combine stiffness (concrete) and variability (wood), the everlasting and the present. Man in his search unfolds in the room and finds the image of his inner self mirrored in the landscape. (Bettina Hegener)

The four sculptures are called:
1) Dance with the Wind
2) The Bud
3) Flowing Forces
4) Dance with the Shade

And these are also our four music titles, and Richard Hiebinger, also known under the name "Sayama Music", wrote the following about them:
"I play three Shakuhachi flutes (1.6, 1.8 & 2.4 feet), made by Zenmura in Osaka, Japan; Tibetan sound bowls & crotales, gongs, Gu-Cheng (Chinese harp) and keyboards.

"Dance with the Elements" is modal ambient music. The sound scales orient to the upper harmonics of Indian ragas respectively the ecclesiastical modes, Chinese pentatonics or intervals as found in nature e.g. in the (atmo-)spherics.

The measure of the four pieces at 64 beats per minute corresponds to the tranquil beat of a healthy heart. This figure is at the same time in resonance with the frequency of the earth's magnetic field, the 64 images of I Ging and the 64 elements of DNA, to name just a few. 64 is derived from 8 x 8. 8 symbolises the octave in music and is deemed the most harmonic interval. And brain waves of 8 beats a minute create a very deep state of relaxation.

The concert pitch of the individual pieces was also not arbitrarily chosen but attuned exactly to the so-called primordial sounds or planet sounds. The planet sounds were calculated mathematically by musicologist and astrophysicist H. Cousto from the orbits of the planets in our solar system.

It is obvious that much intuitive knowledge existed in the ancient cultures concerning the so-called "Harmony of the Spheres", a term used in the Occident since antiquity (see also Hildegard von Bingen). It is then no surprise that the concert pitch as used in the baroque period with an A of about 420 Hz sounds in octave analogy to the orbit of the Moon round the Earth.

These elements were incorporated in the music for "Dance with the Elements" with great care and awareness so that we can say that this music is embedded in the rhythms and vibrations of the nature and cosmos surrounding us. This produces a specially aesthetic, soothing, harmonising and at the same time positively stimulating all-round work of art.

Planet sounds of the individual pieces:
1) Dance with the Wind: Venus sound 442.46 Hz
2) Bud: Platonic Earth Year 172.06 Hz and Mars 144.72 Hz
3) Flowing Forces: Sun 126.22; Moon 210.42 Hz; Mars 144.72 Hz and Venus 442.46 Hz
4) Dance with the Shade: synodical Moon 210.42 Hz

The "sound fountain" which is heard between the four titles was lovingly produced by hand from high quality bronzes by Werner Meiler and also attuned to the planet sounds.

Sound rituals should primarily address those who consciously, actively and responsibly accept their state of healthiness and their intellectual and mental maturity and in this way wish to find positive growth stimulus."

In technical terms, the "Sounds of the Earth Street" is an arrangement of loudspeakers in a beech hedge 80 metres in length which can be seen and heard at "The Erdenklang House", the office of the Erdenklang music publishers, situated in the midst of Homert nature reserve in the Sauerland/Germany "Dance With The Elements" is a unique artistic composition of art, nature and spirituality.

Erdenklangstrasse