"Aer Maris": Three questions for Philipp Kümpel about his surf symphony

When Philipp Kümpel is not out on the water with a wing or sail or shooting YouTube videos, the Leipzig native earns his living as a composer of film music. Among other things, he regularly works on the ZDF productions SOKO Leipzig and Terra X and creates the appropriate background music for them. Philipp has now combined his two passions: with "Aer Maris", he has composed what is probably the first surf symphony in the history of music. The piece is being recorded for the first time these days.

How did you come up with the idea of writing such a symphony?

As a passionate windsurfer, winger and sailor, I am always fascinated by how much sea moods, cloud patterns and waves can change within a very short time. Each of these phenomena is accompanied by its own unique sound. I am a trained musician and a film composer by profession. There I always have to create music for the moods and feelings of other people. Now I wanted to realise my very own impressions of the elements of our passion for water sports through composition. It took a year from the initial idea to the finished orchestral work. With every day on the water in Klitmøller, Pelzerhaken or Tenerife, new moods were added. In the end, there were seven movements - like a week by the sea in musical terms. Aer Maris is not programme music that depicts the natural phenomena one-to-one, but rather a translation of energy and feelings.

Here are the titles of the sentences:

1. Mistral Field - Wide open spaces, wind as rhythm.
2. Subcurrent - Invisible movement - the sea breathes from below
3. Tideforms I - One cycle, one wave - structure in flow
4. Aeolian Drift - sound like wind over strings, floating, directionless
5. Interlude: Between Waters - A moment of silence between two tides
6. Pale Horizon - A distant breath of light and mist
7. Still Sea - Transparency and silence - music that hardly sounds at all

As far as I know, this is the first symphonic work to deal conceptually with windsurfing, wings and foiling - not illustratively, but as a transfer of physical dynamics into orchestral energy and space.

What characterises the symphony - where is the reference to wingfoiling and sailing and how is this reflected musically?

Aer Maris is music for string orchestra and solo violin. Perhaps the solo violin in this composition can be seen as a kind of yacht or board that glides over the orchestra's carpet of notes, sometimes hard on the wind, sometimes sailing astern until it almost crashes. Every sailor and surfer knows the feeling of looking out to sea and wondering what he or she can do in these conditions. Many of the feelings we all have on the water are realised in the seven soundscapes. All in the style of minimal music, i.e. many repetitive impulses such as gusts or waves

How was the premiere and where did it take place?

First there is the recording with the Elblandphilharmonie Sachsen under the conductor Jan Avid Pree and the violin soloist Thomas Liebeskind on 19.3. and 21.3.26. I will make these recordings public on my YouTube channel as a making off. A performance in the concert hall is being planned and I will of course announce the date. The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg would be ideal - with an audience of surfers and sailors, all still with damp hair from the last session!