Videoed performance of one of Lachenmann's things

[heliocentric]

The "function" of the cello is to make sounds
bowing the mute is a way of making sounds

... besides which, as you say, who decides what the "intended function" of an instrument is? All instruments have changed their actual function (that is to say, what they're used for, rather than what one individual or another thinks they "ought" to be used for) and indeed their form over time. The current form of the cello, with its extended fingerboard, endpin and metal-wound strings etc., has taken shape as the result of musicians doing things (playing in higher registers, finding a more ergonomic playing position, projecting its sound through larger ensembles and in larger spaces) that the cello wasn't previously "intended" to do. The Sydney Grews of the nineteenth century (there were probably a lot more of them then) would certainly have had something haughty and disdainful to say about valved horns.

[JohnSkelton]

the timbral subtleties of Grido

The Arditti Quartet playing Grido is on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eQiTqVQdHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwtBy...feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzPs6fAAjS8

to reintegrate many more "traditional" sounds into Lachenmann's musical vocabulary than would be found in his previous work

Perhaps it's his Ligeti Horn Trio moment . I like Grido very much .

[heliocentric]

Perhaps it's his Ligeti Horn Trio moment

Hope not!

In Grido even the "traditional" elements somehow sound newly-created, which is one of Lachenmann's central desires I think, although it doesn't always happen - in the piano piece Serynade for example, which seems rather ponderously didactic to me. On the other hand it might appeal to those who like "music for ordinary instruments used in the ordinary way" (and being ponderously didactic).