Das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen

Andrzej Arsenicz

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Quintet

2026

Cello

Clarinet

Flute

Violin

Program Notes: Das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen (Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure) takes its title from Rainer Maria Rilke’s First Duino Elegy. The piece stems from tension between light and darkness: a process of forming, emerging, and dissolving, yet never fully disappearing. Light is inseparably bound to transience - it reaches us only by already being absent, by having already passed at its source. In this sense, beauty is not merely a state of awe, but a threshold: nothing other than the beginning of terror that we are just able to endure. The first section (come emergendo) depicts forming and emergence: something struggling to come into being, hesitating on the verge of life. In luce emergente, this process succeeds and reaches its most flourishing and radiant phase. Gradually, however, this brightness begins to erode. In the scurendo section, everything dissolves into harmonic fog and systematically descends in register. What was once vibrant and full of life survives only as its own corpse (con orrore). The final section (angosciato, opprimente) reflects continuous evolution and the impossibility of true disappearance. Nothing ever truly vanishes; instead, it persists through transformation, unfolding in an endless process of becoming otherwise.
Performer Credits: Izabela Dobrowolska, Zofia Chyła-Dąbrowska, Aspen Bajak, Maria Treit, Jacob Tesarczyk, Gabriela Krupa