Two things came together that motivated me to write a solo-piece for clarinet, although solo-pieces seem to be less connected with my primary ideas as a composer. Generally communicative features betweenparticipating players establish a dominating level of expression in most of my pieces.

First it was the generous offer by Jörg Widmann to write a solo-piece for him. No wonder that Jörg’s character, his dynamism and creativity immediately motivated my own reflective process in regard to compose such a piece. […]

The second reason for this composition (and becoming the main strucutural device) was the realization of an old dream of mine that refers to a Balinese “dalang”. A “dalang” is a shadow-puppet player. He or she must be an extremely versatile and multi-tasking person, being able to act, to sing, to recite, to lead etc.; and at the same time he/she must able to imitate and present all those different individual characters that are presented in a performance and which sometimes change within seconds from one extreme to the other. […]

Dieter Mack