Cerha: 3 Sätze, für Orchester

With regard to my work, reference has often beenmade to its stylistic variety, its differing material and treatment of the latter, whereby I occasionally detected a touch of discrimination in the sense of arbitrariness in that material. In fact works of very different character came into being in temporal-contiguous proximity, the responsibility lying in the fact that, in several stages of my development, I have proceeded from one point in pursuing various evolutionary strands which grew apart as they developed. Thus a direct comparison of simultaneously created [works] can lead to a somewhat hapless detection of “variety.”

Given that interest exists in pursuing the consistency of a development (which is not necessary for the recipient of a single work), a piece must be placed in a relation to earlier works of the corresponding strand of development in order to gain insight into the logic of a line of evolutionary development. (Incidentally, perception and deliberate parallel pursuit of varying notions and ways of thinking of music were already salient features of my work in the 1940s; I was emphatically emboldened in this by my friend Paul Kont, who was involved with similar concepts).

The sketches for the Drei Sätze für Orchester were already completed in 2011 while I was working on the Drei Orchesterstücke [“Three Orchestra Pieces”]; I finished the full score in March and April 2012.

The eruptive, dramatic element, the subversive protesting of the Intermezzo from the Drei Orchesterstücke are eschewed here, as is the statuary aspect of “Tombeau”.

The vitality of the first piece depends on contiguity, the interplay of rhythmised layers.

The cor anglais and the flute, deployed in soloistic contemplation, dominate the second movement; initially, the orchestra has mere interjections and short interludes, gaining its own character only in the final section and ending with pianissimo string chords.

The third piece is lively concertante, with one rather sombre episode in the middle. It requires a plenitude of virtuosity form the orchestra.

Friedrich Cerha