2 violins, 2 violas, 2
celli - Level 6
SKU:
KU.GM-1911
Composed
by David Philip Hefti.
Edited by David Philip
Hefti. Bach format (230 x
302). In A Folder. Full
score, parts. 78 pages.
Duration 19 minutes.
Edition Kunzelmann
#GM-1911. Published by
Edition Kunzelmann
(KU.GM-1911).
ISBN
9790206202384. 9 x 12
inches.
Monu
mentum, Music for
String Sextet, was
written in 2014 to a
commission from the
Moritzburg Festival, The
Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center New York
and the Kathe Kollwitz
House in Moritzburg. It
is dedicated to the
cellist Jan Vogler. The
world premiere took place
on 19 August 2014 at the
Moritzburg Festival,
performed by Timothy
Chooi & Mira Wang
(violins), Roberto Diaz
& Hartmut Rohde
(violas), Jan Vogler
& Harriet Krijgh
(cellos). The American
premiere took place on 7
May 2015 in the Lincoln
Center with the Amphion
String Quartet, the
violist Yura Lee and the
cellist Jan
Vogler.
The
String
Sextet Momentum<
/em> commemorates
the outbreak of the First
World War, the death of
Peter Kollwitz –
who died as a volunteer,
aged just 18, in the
early weeks of the war
– and the manner in
which his mother, the
artist Kathe Kollwitz,
mourned the loss of her
son. The artist worked
through her pain by
creating her most famous
sculpture, The
Mourning Parents. It
stands today at the
German soldiers’
cemetery at Vladslo in
western Flanders, where
her son Peter also lies
buried. During the 18
years that she worked on
the Parents
, Kathe Kollwitz attended
several concerts at the
Volksbuhne in Berlin,
where from January to
February 1927 she heard
Arthur Schnabel’s
cycle of all the
Beethoven piano sonatas.
Schnabel performed the
Sonata op. 111 in c minor
on 26 February 1927, and
this work touched her in
particular, as we can
read in her diary:
“The strange
flickering notes turned
into flames – a
moment of rapture, taking
one into a different
sphere, and the heavens
opened almost as in the
Ninth (Symphony). Then
one found one’s way
back – but it was a
return after having been
assured that there is a
heaven. These notes are
serene – confident
– and good. Thank
you, Schnabel!”
This encounter with
Beethoven’s last
sonata inspired the
artist to take up work
again on her sculpture
after a long interruption
and to consider different
possibilities for
arranging the two
figures. For this reason,
the first minutes
ofMomentum
are derived from this
sonata by Beethoven
– though without it
being quoted in an
audible manner –
and they leave their mark
on the form of the
Sextet. The number 18 and
the date of Peter
Kollwitz’s death
(23 October 1914) also
have a direct impact on
the work’s
dramaturgy. This music is
mostly calm in nature,
but is time and again
interrupted unexpectedly,
being disturbed by unruly
sounds and vehement
eruptions until time
itself seems to dissolve
in an aleatoric passage.
The work ends with an
extended lament on
“seed corn should
not be ground”, a
line from
Goethe’s W
ilhelm Meister’s
Journeyman Years.
Kathe Kollwitz often
quoted this phrase to
argue for peace, and also
took it as the title for
a lithograph that she
made in 1942. -
David Philip
Hefti
