Capriccio, für Bassklarinette, Viola und Klavier

Capriccio is an energetic piece that transcends the aesthetic boundaries of a new music composition and yet is clearly rooted in the chamber music concert tradition.

In the search for an approach that would harmonise the spontaneity and interpretative individualism of graphic notation with a stringently developing musical form, I came to the solution of notating the rhythm exactly as the only musical parameter. In contrast, other parameters (above all pitch, dynamics and playing technique) were notated with varying degrees of vagueness.

This resulted in a kind of hybrid score: a visual reticle illustrates the metric grid, which is read in the traditional way from left to right and top to bottom and remains unchanged throughout the piece. Graphic symbols are placed in this grid to represent individual, predominantly short sounds. The position, size and shape of the symbols provide a certain amount of information about the pitch, dynamics and playing technique of the sounds, but leave plenty of room and necessity for the (spontaneous) decision of the performer.

The composition process was preceded by an intensive study of electronic dance music (EDM), where I found two aspects in particular that were to lay (in abstract form) the basis of my composition: Firstly, the principle of block-like formal development, which in EDM pieces typically progresses additively in eight-bar blocks. The basic building block of my composition is a four-bar pattern - consisting of three 4/4 bars and one 7/8 bar, which results in a bumpy, propulsive character that clearly contradicts the predictable straightforwardness of the EDM-typical pulse. I apply sample-based music strategies to this four-bar pattern (again in abstract form): the length of the pattern is edited (shortened), frequency filters (high-pass EQ) are used and it is gradually overlaid by other patterns.

The second aspect concerns the structure of the pattern itself. What was important to me here was the complex rhythmic interlocking of several foreground and background layers to achieve the greatest possible plasticity and variability within the rigid grid. This complexity is further increased by the graphic notation, as it essentially incorporates the individual interpretation of the signs by the players, which differs from bar to bar and from performance to performance, into the structure as an aleatoric element.

In principle, an instrumentation other than that given in the score would be possible. Still, ensuring a balanced overall sound and adequate differentiation in interpreting the graphic symbols is essential.