Kammermusik (2008)
(for orchestra)

After my intensive work with mass structures in sound compositions such as Fasce and Spiegel, in which I created a sound language free of all traditional formulations around 1960, I was seized by an immense longing for precisely audible intervals and clearly distinguishable gestures in my music. While working on the still very purist “Ursatz” of my “Exercises” (1962–67), it quickly became clear to me that every step I took in this direction would inevitably lead me into contact with qualities from our musical tradition. As a result, I deliberately inserted very different short sections, which I called “regressions”, into the purist basic material, so to speak, and explored the effects of the different structural levels on each other.   This experiment ultimately became the basis for a diverse, complex musical organism – my stage play ‘Netzwerk’ (Network), which I completed at the end of the 1970s. In between, however, I took the bull by the horns, so to speak, in a few works and made the qualities of very specific and different stylistic phenomena available to me in my work, which cannot be replaced by any intellectual digression. This brief period began in 1969 with an ensemble piece that I called ‘Catalogue des objets trouvés’. This term, which originated in the visual arts and was used in many different and ambiguous ways in the first decades of the 20th century, not only continues to have an impact on my own artistic work, but also continues to be used in various ways in the scene from which it originated. and used in a variety of ways and with multiple meanings, not only in my own visual work but also in various ways in the scene from which it originated, seemed to me to correspond to the character of this piece. In this context, ‘Catalogue’ is an indication that there is no formal scheme, that the individual links in the action are equal and that the sequence can offer abrupt surprises. The ‘encounter of realities that are alien to each other,’ as Max Ernst describes collages, applies figuratively to the piece, but the provocative, ironic trait of rupture and alienation in their Dadaist-influenced form is far removed from my work. I have tried – as I did in my pictures – to see ‘objects’ in the musical material of different stylistic provenance and to “compose” with them. Behind this lies a special, serious attention to the ‘things’ we encounter, deal with, live with – a gentle affection, a love for them.  This creates a different relationship: not one of use and careless disposal when no longer needed, but one of developing a confidential closeness. Making music with John Cage, his dedication and precision in dealing with sound phenomena – in his case, however, thanks to random manipulations – and his underlying, non-judgmental perception of realities – has greatly influenced my attitude. Each of the sounding objects was equally important to me in the piece. The piece itself was also important in my development. It was played a lot in the 1970s, but I was never really happy with it. My tonal intentions did not really come across clearly in the ensemble setting, and I also felt the need on several occasions to revise it or ‘rework’ it. However, the main goal of my development in the 1970s became to merge musical ideas of various origins as seamlessly as possible into a complex and diverse musical organism, which led me to the language of my opera ‘Baal’ and further stages on this path. Over the last 10 years, however, I have become increasingly aware of how easily, on the long path of compositional ‘work’ from the creation of a complex score to the activity of the performing apparatus, something of the freshness and immediacy of the idea in the composer's mind is lost. My attention has thus increasingly turned to directly implementing the spontaneity of an idea. The moment, the instant, became important to me, and in my last works – one of which is also called “Moments” – I tended to avoid the broad, flowing development, the expansive unfolding that is often associated with the idea of the “symphonic”. This gave me a new interest in the “Catalogue” of 1969.  It turned out that the piece sparked my imagination, that what was present in it in nuce began to proliferate, and that in the end it was not a matter of “editing” it, but rather of leaving almost no stone unturned. Today, the old piece can only be glimpsed behind a veil of fog – and probably only by me. There are few tutti sections, but over long stretches there are passages in which individual instruments take on quasi-soloistic functions. In view of the delicate interweaving that chamber music requires and the absence of ‘symphonic posturing,’ I have called the piece ‘Chamber Music for Orchestra.’ Accordingly, the instrumentation is kept small. However, the traditional string and wind sections are joined on equal terms by instruments that otherwise often only have marginal roles in the orchestra, such as the organ, piano, celesta, harpsichord, harp, mandolin, vibraphone and marimba. The oboe has a special function. In a kind of rhapsodic cadenza, it takes on the role of a virtuoso soloist. The oboist – the only one of his kind in the orchestra – also switches to the oboe d'amore.  It is the only time in my career that I have used this instrument; for me, its sound is inextricably linked to my experience of a performance of Richard Strauss's Sinfonia domestica conducted by the composer himself. Despite everything that is new about Kammermusik, it is important to bear its history in mind. What remains of the old are a few surprising breaks: islands of allusions to the sound atmosphere of certain passages in Webern, which are largely supported by the aforementioned ‘extraordinary’ group of instruments, and a quotation from the ‘Entr'acte’ of Erik Satie's ballet ‘Ré`lache,’ with which I was very involved in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the ensemble piece ‘Les Adieux’ from 2005 for the Klangforum Wien, which arose from a re-encounter with an elegy for piano from 1964, ‘Chamber Music for Orchestra’ is based on a new interest in earlier constellations and questions that correspond to a contemporary compositional disposition that is only similar in certain ways, but at the same time fall outside the kind of ‘mainstream’ I would expect.   Even the ‘Catalogue’ was a quasi-singular phenomenon in my oeuvre around 1970; ‘Chamber Music’ is likely to occupy a similar position, as far as I can see today. But this fits in with the overall picture of my work, which has always been characterised by a conscious change of perspectives and has never been subject to the ideological constraints of certain aesthetic positions.   (Friedrich Cerha)