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Piano Trio
2023
9 min.
Cello
Piano
Violin
More Details
- Program Notes
- Ister Counterpoint is a musical reading of Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hymn, “Der Ister”. Its title refers to the Greek name for the ‘Danube’ river that stretches from Germany to the Black Sea, connecting Germany to the Ancient Greek world. The poem was particularly important for the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who, in his 1942 lecture of the same title, discusses the significance of this hymn, not only for the history of Western civilization and its technologies, but for the ontology of the ‘hymn’, and for ‘man’ himself who dwells and comports himself towards the river’s edge. In this discussion, one that emphasizes its ‘non-interpretive’ relation to the poetry, Heidegger addresses a reflexivity between the nature of the Greek and the German: that what was proper to the Greek, “the fire from the heavens”, and what was foreign, “the clarity of presentation”, was just the opposite to the German. This, for Heidegger, is the project of the modern German: to make proper this “fire.” In Ister Counterpoint, I take this proposed ethic, one that resembles the “backwards” motion of the illustrated river, as the form of my piece. Each of the four poetic ‘Strophes’, characterized by Baroque flair and force, are responded to by four ‘Antistrophes’ of clarity and stillness. They pass into one another, sometimes as a violent tear and at other times as a resolution. Through this polarity, I meditate on the central aporia of Hölderlin’s writing: Hospitality. Like Penelope's patient weaving and unweaving of her scarves in wait of Odysseus’ return, there is a careful necessity that is woven into the fabric of each of these four ‘scarves’ and their undoing. Man's will towards hospitality reflects the delicate task of the writer and the equally delicate relation between music and language.
- Recording Notes
- Performed and recorded at the Château de Fontainebleau (2023)
- Ensemble Name
- Matthew Hakkarainen, Thomas Prechal, Kārlis Bukowski