Symphony No. 3 (1997)

Perhaps what I do in my Symphony No. 3 is look at one journey from two different perspectives. And this is why it has two movements. I don’t see any point in retelling these two different and yet so similar stories. I am not sure if the listener will get a richer experience if I initiate him or her into certain details of the musical structure (that everything starts from the central tone G, around which a 12-tone series little by little forms, which is one of the thematic foundations on which the entire work is built; diatonic theme created by the motoric repetition of the same G becomes the other and the relationship between them is one of the most important sources of tension in the symphony, etc, etc.).

For me, writing music is above all a process of organizing meaningful movement of spiritual and emotional energy. No matter what sort of dramatic space you are creating, one has to make rational and intuitive decisions. The fact that from the aspect of psychology of perceptions I am especially interested in tensions created in the interaction of atonal and tonal material, is no news – these tensions existed already in the Symphony No. 2 written ten years ago.

Actually, I would like some writer to turn a novel of theirs into a short capsule musical work a couple minutes long. This would help us better understand the essential, for which reading is not enough…

Erkki-Sven Tüür