Introduction

It is a pleasure to compose for such wonderful musicians as I could here.
A number of events of this composition are rooted in shared experiences, small marginal notes and conversations about music with these musicians. There was e.g. a conversation with Matthias Lorenz about Joseph Haydn and his method of dealing with listener expectations, awakening them and then redeeming them differently than expected, and asking whether this way of thinking is possible today. We could not quite agree on that. My thoughts landed very quickly at Fluxus.

Now I often find it rather ridiculous when contemporary composers adopt 40-year-old methods, talk about crossing borders, and pretend that they invent something completely new. The use of theatrical, performative or scenic elements within music is not just a border crossing today, but a venerable legacy. However, considering the current renaissance of concert rituals, it can be said that this heritage is largely ignored - and, unfortunately, most of the ignoramuses are left unscathed.

For me, this was about a combination of two historical positions (not leaving space for my own!), and the question arises as to whether the connection can extend beyond both. About Haydn, perhaps, in that asking questions about expectations does not focus solely on the immanence of the piece, but involves and finally questions the whole frame of reference "concert", "performance", "interpretation", "composition". About Fluxus, placing the action in a contradictory but serious frame that drives out the bold and a certain attitude of refusal without taking the brunt of provocation and self-irony.

The constructive framework of the Seven Little Movements itself is relatively simple: Each instrument has its own series, which is repeated several times through different permutations. (Although it contradicts the principle of the economy of the material, the difference in the material simply creates beautiful counter- and parallelism, as would not be possible with a single series.) The individual movements now differ with respect to the size of their tone groups (a primitive, and therefore very clear feature), in terms of their sound production and their music organization. Thus, the first movement consists exclusively of groups of five tones, it is knocked on the wooden parts of the instruments and the movement is started together and then played independently at their own pace. In the fourth movement, there are sound groups of three sounds, here are series of very fast accented chord and double-hand repeats, there is a common tempo and a fast steady meter. In the third movement there are one groups and thus no grouping, etc. In the fifth movement, there is a scale of tempos that are used by all three voices, with connections to the other voices.

Between these sentences are each small actions. After the first movement, the cellist once goes around his cello, at the end of the second movement, while the violin is still playing, the pianist turns to the cellist with the words: "Was wär' D. Lös ohne Belang". And finally, at the end of the sixth movement, the violinist seeks a person from the audience who plays the seventh movement for him.

This list of differences makes it clear: I have searched for a wide range of heterogeneous material here. The "real" takes place - as always - in the relationships of these heterogeneous positions. And this - as always here - has to be found by everyone.

A key can certainly also be found in the text of the fifth movement, which can only be understood by the musicians as a whole: It is a small part of an essay by Massimo Cacciari: Chronos apokalypseos - Time of the Apocalypse.

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