Abstract
The noun „Pflotsch“ as well as the adjective „pflotschig“ are onomatopoetical words both extremely common in as well as very specific for swiss german. What everyone in Switzerland immediately understands and detests (although children sometimes play with it) sounds enigmatic in all the neighboring countries (although more recently a software firm has adapted and anglicized the term for their weather app „pflotsh“ which is aimed at the whole midlle european market). „Pflotsch“ – like the english word „slush“ – referes to partially melted snow while (according to the Schweizerisches Idiotikon) in the past it also could refer to wet soil and street dirt in general.
In my essay I want to outline the onomatopoetical sound qualities of „Pflotsch“ in relation to its interesting status between aggregate phases: Being neither ice nor water but a mixture of and transition between the two „Pflotsch“ shall also as an acoustical word be positioned in an intermediate state between sound and noise. Picking up on Pierre Schaeffer’s and Michel Chion’s theory of musique concrète and „musical objects“ as well as on Gérard Grisey’s research on the temporality of sound I would like to propose „Pflotsch“ as a complex, both elusive and insisting musical object, that is constantly on the verge of disappearing either by turning into water or by crystalizing into ice. However, when „Pflotsch“ is there, it is experienced as obtrusively present and a source of inevitable contamination: Like Jacques Lacan argued for the real as that which clings to one’s shoes and this thus constantly dragged along so too is „Pflotsch“, soiling everyone who has to traverse it.
Binotto, Johannes