SCHMUTZ
for solo violin and large ensemble (2018/2019), 12 min.
composition commission by ACHT BRÜCKEN | Musik für Köln supported by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung
"I found the piece very original, a monolith, the right piece at the right time."
– Peter Eötvös
For violin and large ensemble (2018/2019) Hearing is the door to the soul. A door that is always open. Receptive. Passive as well as active. Permanent auditory overload as a result of a viral space seizure. Cultural and social conditions as reference points for perception in a human sense are flooded and unified into a global monocausal devaluation system. Ethics, morals, and culture smudged by the intellectual waste of a self-satisfied feudal society. Brainwashing as an act of a totalitarian pollution faction. Dreamy tralala- and sexy bum-bum aesthetics flow from the foreground needs of degenerate addiction communities. Loud self-staging dominates on stylish linear paths, highways of escape artists. Below that, life. Me. Polluted. Buried. Contaminated. I am in danger of suffocating. Due to this small, everyday carelessness. Due to the ignorant and self-satisfied disposal. I am in danger of being silenced by the broad-gauge loudspeakers. Plastic in the sea, oil in feathers, noise in the ear, poison in food, stench in the air, fear in thoughts. This network of burdens, laid out by each individual, spreads steadily. My music tells of this torment.
For solo violin and ensemble. Starting point: the individual = violin. Birth. A sound on its own. In life. In harmony. Stable. Strong in growth and expansion. Each sound texture like an irreplaceable individual fingerprint. Diversity (polyphony) is desired. But comparisons make us insecure. In the encounter, the need for harmony. Exposed to inner (violin) and outer temptations (ensemble). Envy and hatred force adjustments that demand more of an aesthetic staging of personality than allowing the unfolding of the self. Outside Hooray! Inside Boo! Advertising suggests perfection. One participates. Without sharing. One learns to deal out. The industrial minute (ensemble) accelerates the sense of time in exponential growth. The empty teachings of politics, religions, and the media (ensemble) preach miserable inequality. Either exploiter or exploited. God-man or subhuman. Believer or unbeliever. Exposed to these forces, ideology succumbs. Capitulation, recklessness, resignation. The human himself becomes problematic material. Environmental sin beyond death.
