unendliche melodien (2024)

Composer's notes:

The belief in an ideal, organic unity was a constant presence in 19th century thinking, and I feel its presence in the sound of a Romantic orchestra. When I was asked to write a piece for this instrumentation, I immediately felt that my piece had to deal with such ideas. Wagner's concept of ‘endless melody’ has been much discussed, but with the emphasis often on the word ‘endless’, without questioning what exactly Wagner meant by ‘melody’. It was not simply the upper voice in a musical texture, but rather a word for a music that emerged from the organic unity of nature, unrestrained by artificial formal conventions. ‘Endless Melody’ then really seems to me to be a manifesto on the eternity of nature.

In recent years, this idea seems to be experiencing a resurgence, especially in the music of the spectralists. Gérard Grisey spoke of a musical time of insects, humans and whales. My piece uses extremely slowed-down oriole song interspersed with Gregorian chant, the aim being to achieve a unity between the musics of two species. The form of the piece is also ‘endless’ (like many of Wagner's operas!) as it follows an eternal process of formal 'zooming out'. The material heard in the first two minutes is continually compressed until it takes up half a bar at the end of the piece. But (as with the unity of insect, human and whale music) melodies that were far too slow to understand at the beginning become comprehensible at the end, and it slowly becomes clear that the music is actually taking place on several different levels simultaneously. Hence the many ‘infinite melodies’.

Duration: 10'

Instrumentation:                                                                                        Full Orchestra (2(I =picc).2.2(I=Eb).2. - 4.3.3.- timp.perc(2):glsp/vib/tam-t/susp.cym/woodbl, - pft - harp - strings 14.12.10.8.4.)

First Performance: Hamburger Symphoniker, HfMT Hamburg, 14.11.2024.