Nachtwanderung
for an ensemble of 14 musicians.
(2014)
Commissioned by Ensemble Grenzpunkt, the Musikhochschule and the Mouvement concert series for new music Saarbrücken.
Approaching the principles of minimal music (Eastman, Reich, Riley, Muhly…) and electronic music (electronica, techno, minimal…), this piece questions the relationship between organic expressiveness and the extreme regularity of pulse inherited from electronic music.
The idea that underlies the development of this piece and also metaphorically gives this piece its title is the consistent construction of its form. This is created by defining a “time template”, which consists of a sequence of 4 times 6/4 bars, i.e. 24/4 at a constant tempo.
The music results from the division of this template into different rhythmic articulations
In the 1st sentence, for example, the 24 quarters are divided in the following way:
And in the 2nd and 3rd sentences as follows:
On a metaphorical level, the measure of time resembles the steady pace or gait of a wanderer, and the subdivision could correspond to his train of thought. From the colour scheme the mood mentions a night landscape .