what is left if we aren't the world

Reproducing here liner notes to a new CD released by Edition Wandelweiser Records containing realisations of Emmanuelle Waeckerlé’s score what is left if we aren’t the world: recordings from 2022—an early home recording, the premiere performance in Amsterdam—with one of the 2023 Klangraum performances, from earlier in the week, and a later performance in Thessaloniki, all with different ensembles. Emmanuelle and I met around Eddie Prévost’s weekly workshops a few years ago and we discussed this score soon after it had been written. The following summer, I witnessed and took part in the closing realisation of this piece at the Wandelweiser gathering, Klangraum, in Düsseldorf, the weather humid, changeable and breaking outside. (I wrote a brief report on the festival for The Wire, but its impact on me goes beyond critical summary.) The format of the gathering involves pieces being performed—one might say ‘workshopped’—every day for an entire week. It takes quite something for a piece,…