Robert Schumanns „Liederkreis op. 39“ from 1840 belongs to the icons of the music management and is a piece which I already love for a long time. Two of his songs I have approached already in 1998 in my orchestra piece "Sept Variations", in Metamorphosen I undertook this now in relation on the whole cycle.
Retrograding I confronted my twelve "transformations" with the twelve Schumann songs. Like that the individual members of the twelve developed pairs are subjected in the relationship of their temporal appearance to an acceleration and a retardation process (look to the formal survey!). Thus the whole developed form, moving in opposite directions, extends the song circle thought Schumanns, which concerned above all the circle-like succession of the song keys. This succession f sharp-A-E-G-E-B / e(a)-a-E-e-A-F sharp is taken literally in "Sphinxes" with reference to the suitable part in Schumanns "Carnaval" from 1834/35. It appears precisely in the center as twelve-chord, harmoniously concentrated progression in extreme seclusion and amorphism, as a sudden formal change of my piece and thus exactly at the seam of the two-part opus 39 (songs 1 to 6 resp. 7 to 12).
In addition almost every single "metamorphosis" comes to an internal point of sudden change: formed mostly from moments of the suitable Schumann song, the original materials change after developing phases suddenly into strange and different ones.
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By isolating rhythmical (1), heading retrograding an outbreak (2), using a closing phrase which doesn’t reach its end (3), chiseling out an E major sound (4), applying Schumanns technique of the inexact unisono (5), letting actually successioned sound simultaneously (6), developing a shouting accompanying motif (7), letting the original occasionally rise in the sound space to the surface (8), quarrying out and linking single tones (9), overlaiding webs each other constantly (10), making a postlude omnipresently (11) and alienating a harmonious body (12) I tried, without slipping in a kind of quotation, to let the well-known gleam through, to generate new from old and to interrogate the sedimentary of tradition on its potential.
Beyond the already said original and transformation, perhaps resulting in a superordinate total piece, are connected by numerous added transitions, by the common instrument 'piano' (the voice is reserved to the songs) and by the ensemble which doubles in the "additions" individual lines at the central places of the original song score. This radiating of the song world Schumanns into the sound space and the becoming interrupted again and again by the alienating reflections of my compositions maybe are able to make the old accustomed possibly newly experienceable and the "realization of the finer features of the poem" (Schumann) anew perceptible again.
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