“ΕΝΤΥΠΩΣΕΙΣ“ (“Entypósseis“) for Baritone Saxophone (1998/2004)

The piece “lives” on the degrees of difference between its various sections: It begins with a twelve-tone row, made up exclusively of minor sixths and minor seconds. Rhythmic values and dynamics are also organized serially: 1 half step = 1 sixteenth = fff. An increase in the number of half steps (major second, major third, etc…) results in correspondingly longer rhythmic values and decrease in dynamic level. This serial organization is circumvented by simple arithmetic procedures: With every new appearance, the intervals of the “row” are altered by a half step, so that by the fourth appearance, the minor sixth of the beginning has been replaced by an octave. The twelve-tone row becomes a four-tone row. An abstract material unfolds in accordance with gradual arithmetical processes and through these mechanics arrives at all manner of conditions: atonality and tonality are mixed both “freely” and necessarily, because the mechanical nature of the internal organization forces the material into different molds. This inner “antinomy” within the first section is carried over into the large-scale form in the third section: after a slow second section, which perforates and alienates the abstraction of the beginning with pauses (“emptiness”), a gestural, incisive section in compound meter emerges out of thin air as it were. This section would seem to present the biggest contrast to the beginning of the piece. However, here too there are “subterranean” connections: the melodic material of the rhythmically incisive section consists primarily of minor sixths and minor seconds, the only intervals used in the initial row. The whole piece develops in this manner, in a dialectic of strictness and loosening up, of the arithmetically determined mechanical and the free “singing” of earlier times.