Michael Beil

Beil focuses on the combination of instrumental music, electronic music and video. His compositions lean heavily on concepts specific to what typically happens on stage during a concert (not only the performance of music as such, but in particular the many actions not directly aimed at playing) and the way compositions are created. As such, the arrangement on stage is often precisely fixed and the movements of the musicians on stage are elaborated as an integral part of the score. Several compositions also presuppose a specific decor and props. In this respect, Beil's music borders on music theater. However, the musical dimension is and remains the unabridged starting point of his works. Therefore, he himself speaks rather of "scenic compositions."

A central theme in Beil's work is the decoupling of sound and movement. Once disconnected, Beil uses them as building blocks that he can recombine into new configurations. The causal relationship between movement and sound thus loses its self-evidence. Beil's recent focus on virtuality (specifically the changing perception of reality spurred by an increasing virtualization of everyday life) is an extension of this idea. Examples include Bluff for ensemble, tape and live video (2015) and compositions for musicians without instruments, such as Key Jack / Jane (2017). Beil deconstructs the classical concert situation throughout his work through exaggeration and doubling. In exit to enter (2013), for example, he makes the musicians come on and go off stage over and over again, on three different 'stages': (1) the part of the stage where the ensemble sits (on the right, in the dark), (2) a small central part of the stage with two stools that functions as a recording area, and (3) the projection wall that covers the entire left half of the overall stage. Furthermore, he calls into question (explicitly or not) the art work as a masterpiece by quoting well-known musical works in new and unusual contexts, or by transforming or deconstructing material that is idiomatic for a certain instrument. "Quotations, for me, are the main material," Beil says of his use of citations.[3] Recognizable quotations from existing works by other composers are inspiring building blocks for Beil because of the emotional charge or the references already attached to them. It is those connotations that the composer uses as material – a new meaning that can fade or appear subsequently by incorporating the quotations in new musical contexts.[4]

Moreover, Beil makes his own scores, MAX patches and tapes available simply and free of charge through his website.

Beil created most of his compositions in close collaboration with the musicians involved, and regularly worked with ensemble mosaik and with Nadar Ensemble. For Nadar Ensemble, he composed three large-scale compositions, which also show a strong interconnection and evolution between them: exit to enter (2013), Bluff (2015) and Hide To Show (2021).

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In the 1990s, before he began focusing on the use of video in his compositions, Beil wrote orchestral and chamber music works, mostly with tape. Those compositions, which were in line with the usual conventions of their genres, at the same time sharpened his interest in the visual dimensions of concert performance. In this sense, they helped create the ground for Beil's later artistic work, which focuses on the interaction between sound and image. He integrated pre-recorded video into the concept of a composition for the first time in 1999, with Mach Sieben (for piano, video and tape). In this work, which Beil himself refers to as a key work, the solo pianist is mirrored in a video recording, projected next to the piano. At least: so it seems at first. The recording, actually, is played in reverse. Since the work is a nearly exact palindrome, the video runs parallel to what is being played live. The reversal, however, makes the movements of the pianist in the video seem unnatural and the sounds that are played take a reverse course (fading in from nothing towards the attack). The alienating effect is further enhanced by a short spoken text ("Voll mit Zwergen ist mein Weg"), some carefully composed differences between the part played live and the pre-recorded video, and the inevitable minor discrepancies in timing between the two parts. The accumulation of live piano sounds and their reverse recording in Mach Sieben is aurally reminiscent of the Doppler effect, a sound phenomenon that fascinated Beil from an early age. Beil grew up near the Formula One racing circuit Hockenheimring in southern Germany. Several family members, including his father, followed the races there and took young Beil to the track. As a matter of fact, the title of the composition Mach Sieben refers to the Mach number. In the short video documentary Like in a Hamster Wheel, Beil discusses his fascination with the Doppler effect, inverted sounds and palindromes.

Beil has been using live video since 2006. Around that time, video technology and computer processing speed became sufficient to record live fragments during the concert and process them with a minimum amount of latency. This thus made it possible to project the video recordings immediately afterwards – also in multiple, and inverted or not – and to combine them with the same images and with other live actions. The musical concepts that Beil shapes in this way border directly on musical theater. For Branng! (2005), Open Source (2008), Belle Nuit (2009), exit to enter (2013) and Bluff (2015), Beil also collaborated with director Thierry Bruehl as part of this process. The realization of such compositions also requires complex production conditions, and very disciplined actions and skilled theatricality on the part of the musicians. Therefore, they are usually created in close collaboration with the performers.[7]

Exit to enter (2013) is apt illustration of how Beil zooms in on details of performance in his music. Beil has the musicians in this composition step perpetually in and out of the spotlight, where short sequences of musical actions are recorded. Those recordings are then projected, in countless new combinations, onto a large wall next to the musicians. The actual musical performance remains in the shadows all the while. Beil thus cuts the visible link between cause (the movements of a musician) and effect (the audible sounds), drawing attention all the more strongly to the expected connection between the two. The many repetitions also refer to the daily reality of studying and practicing of professional musicians. "Every musical performance is a kind of restriction," he explains, "Because every millisecond the right notes must be played. In exit to enter, this becomes very visible through the video part."[3][8]

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A decade later, Beil pushes the use of live video to its ultimate consequence with the composition of works with tape and live video, but for musicians without instruments, such as Key Jack / Jane for pianist without keyboard, soundtrack and live video (2017), and caravan for four musicians without instrument, soundtrack and live video (2017). In Key Jack / Jane, the pianist takes a seat behind a wooden board flanked by two projection screens. On these, as in exit to enter, live recordings of the performer are projected. While the pianist performs a complex choreography, the music is fully realized as a soundtrack, again liberally using quotations. This recombination of movement, image and sound results in a composition in which the performer plays a pianist, as it were, while Beil dissects the classical image of the piano virtuoso and their instrument.

In Hide To Show for ensemble, tape and live video (2021), he pushes the contradictions between tangible reality and the virtual world even further. Six small rooms are set up on stage; the audience seems to look inside the backstage where the musicians prepare for the performance. They play a few notes, they change clothes or dance to the music in their headphones. Some actions seem loose and spontaneous, others are clearly rigorously choreographed - staged nonchalance meant for the camera. But we don't just get to see everything. The little rooms can be closed with blinds going up and down. They literally hide in order to show. With open slats, the audience can peek into the rooms. Closed they hide the musicians' coming and going. At the same time, they turn into a projection surface. The musicians hide behind their costumes, behind curtains and recordings of themselves, leaving the persons themselves still invisible. What is at first a fleeting movement is highlighted in detail through repetition, doubling and imitation. A special role is reserved for the genesis of a YouTube hit and its journey into hyperreality and a parody of the video for In my room by The Beach Boys. In the process, it becomes less and less clear where tangible reality ends and virtual reality begins.