Structure
I. Was ist Mi-Mi-Mi, Klaus?
II. Alles ist nur Mi-Mi-Mi
III. Es war aber : D
Description
Mi-Mi-Mi Neunte is a 9’50” audio work for voices, field recordings, cassette tape transformations, synthesizers and fragments of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Starting from an accidental encounter with a popular parody of Beethoven’s Ninth, the piece explores how identical sounds acquire different meanings through memory, cultural background and individual listening experience. Moving between humor, loss, media archaeology and sonic memory, the work follows a chain of associations triggered by a single syllable: “Mi.”
Mi-Mi-Mi Neunte began with a small misunderstanding.
During a conversation with other artists, people repeatedly referred to “Mi Mi Mi” as if it were something universally familiar. I did not understand the reference. Later, someone showed me a clip from The Muppet Show in which puppet characters perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony using only the syllables “Mee Mee Mee.”
For others, the sound seemed connected to humor, childhood memory, and a shared cultural reference. I misheard it instead as “Mi,” the solfège pitch name E. From that moment, a different chain of associations began to unfold.
I started asking myself what this “Mi” actually meant to me. At some point I noticed that the spectral region around E resembled the dense layers of frog calls I remembered from around my parents’ house in rural Japan. These sounds had once seemed completely ordinary to me — part of the unnoticed background of everyday life. After the death of my parents, however, the same sounds gradually became connected to loneliness, distance, and loss.
The work follows these unstable transformations of listening.
The composition unfolds in three parts. The first section combines repeated “Mi-Mi-Mi” fragments with cassette tape transformations created using an old analog tape recorder. This section also functions as a small homage to the period when musique concrète was produced through physical tape manipulation.
During the digital transfer process, unidentified sonic fragments emerged from deteriorated tape material — most likely remnants of old radio recordings accidentally preserved on the cassette. I intentionally kept these sounds in the piece. Although they remain meaningless to me, they may once have belonged to somebody else’s childhood memory or private listening experience.
The second part moves into an acoustic memory space constructed from frogs, insects, and footsteps on snow — sounds that could never coexist within the same season — together with other sonic memories associated with my childhood environment in rural Japan. Although this section may initially resemble field recording, it is not documentary. Certain elements are translated rather than literally reproduced: fireflies, for example, do not produce sound, yet their intermittent appearance in darkness is transformed into scattered sonic gestures.
The final section shifts toward a synthetic and harmonically shaped sound world centered around synthesizer textures. Beethoven-like gestures and ascending harmonic movements appear not as direct quotations, but as unstable resonances.
For me, all of these elements are deeply connected. At the same time, I am aware that the same sounds may evoke completely different meanings for other listeners. What appears nostalgic, humorous, painful, meaningless, or familiar depends on personal memory, cultural background, and individual listening experience.
Rather than producing a single interpretation, Mi-Mi-Mi Neunte moves through these shifting layers of listening, where identical sounds can lead to entirely different emotional realities.
Audio Materials and Voices
Fragments from a public-domain recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (European Archive / archive.org)
Baritone voice: Kento Uchiyama
Spoken voice: Klaus Jörres
Field recordings and additional sound materials recorded by the composer
Cassette tape transformations created using analog tape recorders
Acknowledgements
Produced with support from:
Nagoya College of Music, Japan
TU Berlin Electronic Studio, Germany