Introduction

A text by Robert Musil (1880-1942) from the posthumous appendix to “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften“ was chosen for the composition On the familiarity of doubt. In the passage, the siblings Ulrich and Agathe discuss the question of whether and how precisely colours, shapes, appearances and feelings can be described and named with concepts and words. Agathe believes that words can only ever approximate phenomena and will never be exact. She says:

In my interpretation, the mirror here stands as a metaphor for the translation or transfer into the language of words, the night for ignorance, the doubling of depth and the shimmering for the sensing of phenomena. Agathe therefore does not deny that there is a connection between the language of words and the phenomena, but she doubts any form of congruence.
Following this approach, the composition translates the linguistic metaphors into musical ones. The text is divided into small sections, each with its own forms of movement, contrapuntal structures and combinations of instrumentation. The tempo is increased in three stages at a ratio of 4:3, with the last section returning to the initial tempo. A single chord - a minor triad with a major seventh - and its inversion form a link across all the small sections. The opening section is repeated in mirror image, shortened somewhat rhythmically. The two “und doch” (“and yet”) represent breaks in unison, with which other directions are taken in terms of content and music. The two passages that question perception (“you see almost nothing at all” and “and yet you realise nothing at all”), the first of which is composed twice, are each interpreted in a fundamentally different way. What unites them is the simultaneous use of whispered or spoken language with singing.