Rrrrrrr... 5 Jazz-Stücke (1981)
(for ensemble)

As I started to think about the Radio Phantasy, I imagined d’Alembert engaged in the tedious work on his Encyclopaedia, often nodding off over the pages of his manuscript, all of whose entries began with the letter "R" . In his half-sleep, the precise meanings of the definitions would overlap, very unscientifically, with the possibility of combining them by instinctive association, or in a way that blurs their sense.

I only had to modify this idea just a little for my knowledge – in Diderot’s sense – to be illuminatingly expanded, and for the project to be made feasible. Thus I changed the starting point from a broadly conceived encyclopaedia to a music dictionary: I got hold of a paperback example, and immediately found myself in the midst of infinitely multiplying domains, ranging from compelling semantics to the farthest reaches of musicological poesy.

The work Rrrrrrr… consists of 41 independent pieces of music, all beginning with the letter "R". Each segment (I organ; II choir and piano; III percussion duo; IV winds, double basses and percussion; V solo voice; VI jazz trio) is published in a separate volume. A performance of the pieces results in the Radio Phantasy Rrrrrrr…

1    Rackett: Rankett (Ger. Rank = curve. Ital. rocchette = distaff, bobbin): 1. double reed instr. made of a short, can-shaped wooden or ivory cylinder, whose cylindrically bored undulating tube normally has 16 hose (11 of them key-holes). The 16th/17th’ rackett, built in four sizes, was blown through a single twisted reed: the sound was soft and slightly nasal. 2. Organ stop regal pipe with short resonators (= Rancket-regal) and a sound similar to the wind instrument.

2   bebop: jazz style, arose in early 40s as a reaction against commercial Swing. It gave new scope for improvisation. Characteristics include irregular and unpredictable forms of rhythm and melody, modern harmony resembling the expressive resources of contemporary music, and favouring the tritone (flattened fifth); its name comes from its onomatopoetic scat singing (be-bop-vocals).

3   reed section: the reed instruments i.e. clarinet and saxophone families in a big band: as opposed to brass section.

4   R: Old/New: since this brief study in jazz idiom, composed 1986 for solo trumpet, sits comfortably within the Rrrrrrr…-Cycle, was puted in as the fourth item, but for violine or clarinet. One could also talk here of “Rhythm and Blues”, a term designating the black style of music making in Harlem in the 1930s. Alternatively: Old (Rhythm) and New (Blues).

5   riff: type of melodic line used in jazz, in which the wind- and rhythm groups support the soloist’s improvisation with a simply structured, short melodic phrase, repeated constantly like an ostinato (background), and requiring only slight changes to match the harmonic progressions.

M. K.