all that dust (2025)
(for solo percussion and string quintet)

dust / dʌst / n.: a fine, dry powder of tiny particles of waste matter or earth.

A film of dust is like a membrane, covering or layering the body or thing, on the ground, on surfaces or carried in the air.
The dust of the earth is a place of burial.
Dust within a room is composed mostly of dead skin, a powder of mortal remains.

"...all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those things that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else,....a wordless thing in an empty space…"
The Unnameable, Samuel Beckett

Surface, weight and touch are the essence of musical performance:
the weight of a beater resounding; the bow drawing the sound out of silence; the differentiation of touch pressing the brushes into the drum skin; the expansion of the muscles between the shoulder blades; the player´s in-breath preceding the played tone …

Inside, withheld, unbreathed,
Nether, undisclosed.
Souffle, vapour, ghost,
hauch and dust.
Absent, silent, void
Naught beside.
Either, neither, sole,
Unified.

With my thanks to Dirk Rotbrust and Musikfabrik

(Rebecca Saunders)