It can be “shining” not only in the world of sight, but also in the world of hearing. What color is to the eyes, sound is to the ears. Its inexhaustible variety ranges from all kinds of harmonies to all manner of noise, from sensual infatuation to spheres of disturbing darkness. Like a multitude of compositions in contemporary music, this piece sets out to explore shades of timbres and nuances in orchestral color.

The question thereby arises regarding interaction with the temporal axis: if sound “objects” are illuminated and encircled in mostly static environments, which would appear to be in contrast to traditional types of phrasing, is it then possible to examine the depths of orchestral soundscapes while simultaneously building melodic spans and culminations?

Whereas the focus on timbre in new music is often accompanied by an abandonment of narrative design, this piece specifically addresses the tension between “horizontal” musical flow and “vertical” pauses. This is represented in the first movement by an extensive trumpet melody that gradually emerges from different sound states and finally collapses in on itself, and in the second movement by the genre of the Passacaglia, which, by its very definition, raises the passage of time as its subject more than almost any other musical form. The cyclical recurrence of a model and its variations represents both circulation and flux concurrently, motion but not progression, panta rhei: a human conception of eternity.

“Luceat”: This fragment from the Lux æterna of the requiem mass deliberately suppresses its verbal context. The first movement takes up the idea of a static “eternal light”; the second, on the other hand, evokes fire as its energetic origin. Even if we are fascinated by the idea of a transcendent standstill – we, in our finite reality, cannot ultimately exist without dynamic progressions.