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Piano Trio
2023
Cello
Piano
Violin
- Program Notes
- Ister Counterpoint is a musical reading of Friedrich Hölderlinâs Hymn, âDer Isterâ. Its title refers to the Greek name for the âDanubeâ 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 âhymnâ, and for âmanâ himself who dwells and comports himself towards the riverâs edge. In this discussion, one that emphasizes its ânon-interpretiveâ relation to the poetry, Heidegger addresses a reflexivity between the nature of the Greek and the German: that what was proper to the Greek, âthe fire from the heavensâ, and what was foreign, âthe clarity of presentationâ, was just the opposite to the German. This, for Heidegger, is the project of the modern German: to make proper this âfire.â In Ister Counterpoint, I take this proposed ethic, one that resembles the âbackwardsâ motion of the illustrated river, as the form of my piece. Each of the four poetic âStrophesâ, characterized by Baroque flair and force, are responded to by four âAntistrophesâ 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 Hölderlinâs writing: Hospitality. Like Penelope's patient weaving and unweaving of her scarves in wait of Odysseusâ return, there is a careful necessity that is woven into the fabric of each of these four âscarvesâ 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 ChĂąteau de Fontainebleau (2023)
- Performer Credits
- Matthew Hakkarainen, Thomas Prechal, KÄrlis Bukowski