Octet (2000-1)
- Instrumentation: cl., fg., cr., string quartet, cb.
- Movements: 1
- Duration: 13'
- Commissioned by: Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft
- Premiere: 20.02.2001, Wiener Konzerthaus; Scharoun Ensemble Berlin
- Publisher: Breitkopf & Härtel (hire material)
Program Note:
(EN)
What does it mean that the silent, soothing motif is coming back again and again? When the music becomes mad and runs far away (in the great unison), even there the entry motif waits calmly?
It may mean home. It may mean the word "home" as Ivan Wernisch workes with it in one of his early poems: he surprisingly devided the word domů (půjdeme domů = let us go home) into do (= to) and mů (it has no meaning, but in the given context it's long ů - sounds "oo" - which must be pronounced with lips pouted out as if to childish kiss, suggest a feeling of home as a place of tenderness, warmth and velvet shelterness as well as being soothed).
And what about thet outcries of mis-tuned wind's triads and that droll creaks of strings? And what about that crying "big" unisons? Aren't all these bustles just creating the chance to get back to "mů" again and again?
I was asked to write a piece for a Schubertian instrumental constelation: for octet. Of course I took a challenge to be early-romantic also in other sence: to provide a self-reflection, singing an instrumental song about my painful inner landscape.
Martin Smolka