for Ten Instruments

Program Notes

Lichtung belongs to a group of instrumental works which share a similar formal conception: in each piece of the group the material on which the music is elaborated does not appear until the end of the work. I call this process the "revelation" of the form because the general tendency is one of a progressive unveiling of what is the real center of the work. The first three pieces of the cycle are: So er for twenty instruments (1985),Lichtung for ten instruments (1987), and Die Innere Grenze for string sextet (1988) . In these three pieces, and to various degrees, the beginning is not indicative of what constitutes the piece . It is only in the course of the work that, progressively, the various elements find their place. At the end, they constitute, as it were, the "formal center" of the whole. Lichtung is based on a melody which emerges softly at the end: its first half is played by horn and flute in unison, then viola and clarinet. Each section of the work is controlled by motives derived from parts of the melody. When these fragments are finally assembled at the end, they form the center of the work. Everything else has by then been eliminated, as peripheral, less essential. In that sense the formal conception is one of progressive unveiling, of progressive "revelation" of the origin of the work. Because its origin appears just before the final silence, the work opens itself to the outside, offers itself to the world when its center is finally exposed. Here, also, lies the relation to the title: Lichtung (clearing, in English). It comes from a book by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard: Korrektur, in which one is told of a man, Roithamer, who conceived an "ideal" construction (a Cone of habitation, in the book) in a clearing in the middle of a forest. The notes left by Roithamer after his death show that he was constantly revising his work, eliminating every time a large amount of material, by "correction." The final result of these corrections was to stand in the clearing: "We always go on to the absolute limit, we don't shy away from that, just as we don't shy away from death. One day, in a single instant, we'll break through the final barrier, but the moment hasn't come yet. (...) When the moment has come, we don't know that it has come, but it is the right moment. We can exist at the highest degree of intensity as long as we live, so Roithamer (June 7). The end is no process. Clearing." (Thomas Bernhard, Korrektur, 1975) Lichtung is dedicated to Francis Bayer