Fraktale. Concerto philharmonico, Op. 94 (1991)
(for large orchestra)

Clouds are not spherical, mountains are not conical, coastlines are not circles, and Rin de is not smooth, nor does lightning follow a straight line. Mathematician and chaos theorist Benoît Mandelbrot proves that natural forms are not Euclidean shapes. The geometry of nature is fractal, irregular, fragmented, and excitingly irregular. The fractal and each of its parts, from the largest to the smallest, contain an image of the whole. Not identical, but similar – a mirror image. Fractals represent a reversal of scientific and mathematical thinking. Whereas chaos was previously regarded as a deviation, as the decay of order, we now know that chaos creates reality via four attractors. The familiar order is only an interruption of the unfamiliar, an island in the midst of a strange or chaotic attractor the size of the entire universe. We live in a world of the decay of order into turbulence, that strange attractor that can only be understood musically. Whirling sequences of notes create the polyphony of civilisation. It is up to us to hear the turbulence of existence and become turbulence ourselves.

Graf Arnold Keyserling und Lotte Ingrisch