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Piano Trio
2023
Cello
Piano
Violin
- Program Notes
- Ister Counterpoint is a musical reading of Friedrich Hƶlderlinās Hymn, āDer Isterā. Its title refers to the Greek name for the āDanubeā 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 āhymnā, and for āmanā himself who dwells and comports himself towards the riverās edge. In this discussion, one that emphasizes its ānon-interpretiveā relation to the poetry, Heidegger addresses a reflexivity between the nature of the Greek and the German: that what was proper to the Greek, āthe fire from the heavensā, and what was foreign, āthe clarity of presentationā, was just the opposite to the German. This, for Heidegger, is the project of the modern German: to make proper this āfire.ā In Ister Counterpoint, I take this proposed ethic, one that resembles the ābackwardsā motion of the illustrated river, as the form of my piece. Each of the four poetic āStrophesā, characterized by Baroque flair and force, are responded to by four āAntistrophesā 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 Hƶlderlinās writing: Hospitality. Like Penelope's patient weaving and unweaving of her scarves in wait of Odysseusā return, there is a careful necessity that is woven into the fabric of each of these four āscarvesā 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 ChĆ¢teau de Fontainebleau (2023)
- Performer Credits
- Matthew Hakkarainen, Thomas Prechal, KÄrlis Bukowski