Description
The piece “Etüde 1” was created from May 2020 to February 2021, on behalf of the French Ensemble l’Itineraire and the cultural association Flexus from Flix. In contrast to previous pieces, I was not influenced by an extra-musical idea. It is, in a way, music that speaks for itself. The idea of the Etude character is influenced by various aspects. On the one hand, as a child nad student, I expressive etudes, like e.g. the piano studies of Ligeti. During the time of the composition, I was inspired by the work “Monument, Selbstportait, Bewegung” and the rhythmic processes it thematized. Since 2019 I have been teaching at a music school and have to deal with studies for students once again. Here I became aware that the spectrum of studies ranges from epxressive musical studies to more technical exercises. Ligeti has transformed the etude into the artistic, but this is not necessarily the character that the etude always represented. Etudes were often teaching materials that encouraged students to learn certain techniques and to improve their craft skills. There are many etude-inspired structures in the work: these are to be found both in the punctual sound fields that form Varése chords, but also in the minimalist clarinet repetitions, in the solo passages. Pointed passages transfer the often rigid into free elements and structures.
Etudes used to be often in specific keys, I then replaced this idea with consciously used central notes, which in a sense form something like a key of the etude. In this sense, the piece often circulates aaround a central tone until it is broken up again into sound fields that are more chromatic or, later, spectral. The central tone can then be adjusted, for example, as a spectral component.
The piece reaches an additional depth through the conscious use of electronics, represented by additional voices, which are pre-produced. […]
