Ensembles

Air, Love & Vitamins

Pepl wrote the piece in the early 1980s. The first recording appeared in 1983 on the ECM album with Werner Pirchner and Jack DeJohnette.¹ Pepl himself called it „ein ganz liebes Lied mit einer lieben, einfachen Melodie“ [“a very sweet song with a sweet, simple melody”] that really called for a vocal or a saxophone, something „das mit langen Tönen daherkommt“ [“that comes along with long notes”].² Since then it has become a standard of Austrian jazz: Wolfgang Muthspiel, who had studied with Pepl in Graz, named a 2004 album with Marc Johnson and Brian Blade after it, and it is played, among others, by the Christian Muthspiel Trio, by Robert Riegler and Primus Sitter, and by Klemens Bittmann and Franck Tortiller.³ For the 2015 double CD, Agnes Heginger wrote lyrics for it; there the piece is called “Luft, Liebe und Vitamine”.⁴

Works for bands and ensembles

Jazz pieces. Pieces from Pepl's own groups include “Dinozzo”, “Radlbremser”, “The Halley's Comet, Light Blue Blues”, “Camomile Tea”, “Das Auge des Maulwurfs”, “Tintenfisch Inki”, “Die alte Mär und das Mann”, “Scale Fox”, “Song for Gil”, “Little Mom” and “Ankara”. Pepl usually notated them only as lead sheets and rehearsed them with his bands until they were learnt by heart.⁵ Around 20 lead sheets exist in a version newly engraved in 2020 and can be requested for rehearsals and performances (Request sheet music).

Chamber music. Real-time Composing gave rise to works for string quartet, chamber ensemble and percussion ensemble, including “Grogos”, “Moving Navel”, “Über kurz oder lang, von der Weite und der Enge” and “Anspannen, Überspannen, Abspannen”. The sheet music has survived or been catalogued only in part; what is known is listed in the Catalogue of works. Stefan Heckel observes that performances were especially successful when the performers had experience of improvisation and knew Pepl's sound language.⁶

Music without scores. The pieces of the Lonely Single Swinger Band exist only as recordings. Anyone who wishes to work with them will find in Heckel listening reports, time-event tables and a verbal score as a starting point (Real-time Composing).⁷

The tape concept

Since 2018, the band around Clemens Salesny and Martin Bayer has played with Pepl's original tracks from his home studio, which are played back over several channels across the stage; the musicians improvise alongside them (Projects). Anyone planning a similar project, for instance at a university, can enquire whether and which tracks might be used. That depends on the material and on the rights; for many pieces only the stereo mix survives.⁸

Reporting performances

Anyone who performs works by Harry Pepl in public reports them, like all works, in the music programme, that is, the programme of the event, to the AKM or to the collecting society responsible in the country concerned. Only in this way do the royalties reach the rights holders. Titles, authors and work identifiers for the report are given in the Catalogue of works. We are also glad to hear about performances directly, ideally with date, venue and line-up, so that they can be included in the Chronology (Report a performance).