The symphony as besides the string quartet central instrumental form of the last three centuries has become old. Hardly there is still a social need of new ones. Already after Beethoven the genre was declared as finished. And since Mahlers personalisation of the form one doesn't know any more what a symphony is. But although it seemed since then suspicious to the musical avant-garde up to today, symphonies were composed through the whole 20th century. In some countries it remained even a natural form. In the opposition against the demands of the modern age, and in the double relation of an obligation and demarcation to the past, the symphonic effort got increasingly somewhat almost heroic.
Since my musical beginnings the scope of orchestra music fascinates me still before the scopes of chamber music and the opera, and within this one above all the genre of the symphony. A deep original delight connects me since ever quite only with this designation, which is one of the few originally musical. After I had already composed eight partly very extensive orchestra pieces over a period of about fifteen years, now my 1. Symphonie signifies to me at first a kind of summary and bundling of done experiences with the orchestra so far. The beforehand chosen title expresses furthermore the requirement to myself and places the finished piece inevitably into a historical context. It names therefore also the arising vertigo in view of the question, whether a genre of this immense prestige, this gravity and this overwhelming tradition still something appreciable is to be added. The scruples resulting from that are to be overcome only in the moment of working. This is related too much to itself, as that it could constantly take care of its historical task.
Today symphony as a large orchestral form seems to me describable as a creation of large developments and expanded timings. In the meantime confession-like, visionary, all-embracing have retired as decisive and no more rising categories. Symphony as the genre which can take up everything in itself like a melting pot. It shows the composer in his present stage of complexity. Symphony as an apparently old-fashionable, contradictory nevertheless.
In their succession slowly - fast - slowly - fast the four mouvements of my composition communicate very different. Besides correspondences result for example by the cut-like of 1st and 4th, the beginnings of the same kind of 1st and 3rd or the retrograde-ness of the 2nd and 3rd mouvement from their middle. In addition numerous recurring figures link the total of my composition. Among them above all a central chromatic-circling eight-tone-motive, quasi a "thème cyclique", which seems each time as changed in shining through of the traditional mouvement characters and in the dynamics of a development. Referring the mouvements diversely on each other and balancing their weights exactly, one could hardly exist detached from the others.
In my endeavours for a differentiated expression-fullness, in its "symphonic sound", in its inclusion of also "worn out" materials and in its formally unbound arrangement, my symphony wants to represent a contribution to the continued existence of this unique genre not least. This has a so to speak radical dignity in view of its far distance to the merchandise-character meanwhile. The symphony today: an almost ridiculously old-fashioned and historically not to be surpassed contradictory fact.
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