SKU: HL.14028929
Written for Moray Welsh whilst still an undergraduate at York University. This piece was completed in mid-September. Inspired by Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf. A solo 'cello seemed an appropriate medium for music which might explore the character of Harry Haller, with his desire for bourgeois comfort and his strong misanthropic and suicidal tendencies. The opening theme attempts to express this - melancholy, nostalgic, a bit Biedermeyer (cf. Brahms Intermezzi). The basic theme of the book, at its simplest, is that every human personality consists of hundred of different personalities - within every man there lurks a wolf. Accordingly the tendency of my piece is for all its musical material to become distorted, either by thematic transformation or by changes of timbre. There are three movements played without a break. The first is a character portrait of the Steppenwolf. The second is concerned in the most general sort of way with the dance elements in the novel - Harry's being taught to dance and appreciate low 'popular' music - a tango is recapitulated in a waltz and 'Yearning', a popular song of the time (1927) is hinted at. The third movement concerns the Masked Ball and the Magic Theatre. Mozart is one of Hesse's great loves and he is repeatedly mentioned in the book. Inevitably some Mozart quotes have been worked in, the most significant being a reference to The Magic Flute 'fire and water' flute theme in the middle of the second movement. Long before I finished the piece, I was disenchanted with the work of Hesse. Much of Steppenwolf I now find rather embarrassing and the claims currently made for Hesse's greatness seem to me exaggerated. Since my piece is in no important sense programmatically specific, this change of heart doesn't really matter. ~ David Blake.
SKU: BR.EB-9074
ISBN 9790004179499. 9 x 12 inches.
World premieres:I version for flute: Wiesbaden, 1972II version for piano: Nyon, 1972III version for var. insts.: Cologne, May 29, 1976VI version for accordeon: Fribourg, June 25, 1987VIII version for violoncello Tokyo: October 14, 1989X version for organ: Stuttgart, March 28, 2018This work (A Breath of the Untimely) was first written for solo Flute and dedicated to Aurele Nicolet. Its bears the subtitle Lament on the Loss of Musical Thought - some Madrigals for Solo Flute or Flute with any other Instruments. This serves as a playing instruction but doubles at the same time as an outmoded programme: it refers back to the musical origin of the opening lamenting motif, a tradition which was once of its time but is not of our time - namely the Lamento genre which gave the title to the Chaconne in Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. Almost simultaneously I wrote a second version for Piano (for Piano one-and-a-half hands), which already formulates possible approaches for the performer, in some detail, to the indicated, quasi-canonic version of the piece in the programme. The multiple version Ein Hauch von Unzeit III realizes a concrete version of a formal state which floats between strict canon and aleatoric principles: each of the musicians who are spread throughout the hall introduces their own idiomatic translation of the flute part. And so the music exists, omnipresent, not only spatially throughout the hall, but also formally in a sort of fluctuating simultaneity. For that reason, it was my express wish to any potential interpreter that they should construct entirely their own version of the piece. A healthy number of musicians have responded to my suggestion - versions of the piece have now been made for guitar (Cornelius Schwehr, Gunther Schneider), accordion (Hugo Noth), double bass (Fernando Grillo), violin (Hansheinz Schneeberger), viola, violoncello, and double bass (trio basso, Koln), violoncello (Michael Bach), trombone (Andrew Digby) and, created by myself, a sung version for voice (to words by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel und Max Bense), and for viola.The most important requirement for the whole piece is absolute stillness, which should as far as possible emanate from the performer. The pauses are occasionally in this respect the most important element. These may, if one can find the necessary stillness, become very long.Ein Hauch von Unzeit (A Breath of the Untimely) - time almost dissolves!(Klaus Huber, 1989/2014 - translation: David Alberman)CD:Jean-Luc Menet (Bass flute)CD Traversieres 120.270Jean-Luc Menet (fl)CD STR 37039Bibliography:Zimmermann, Heidy: Zeitgestaltung im Kompositionsprozess bei Klaus Huber - dargestellt anhand von Skizzen, in: Mnemosyne. Zeit und Gedachtnis in der europaischen Musik des ausgehenden 20. Jahrhunderts, hrsg. von Dorothea Redepenning und Joachim Steinheuer, Saarbrucken: Pfau 2006, S. 90-109World premiere: VIII version for violoncello Tokyo: October 14, 1989.
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