Encore

Thoughts about "Encore", July 2016

Encore: the tension between "not yet," "yet again," and "no more."

A structural form is repeated; the compositional context in which it stands changes. On the one hand, through the repetition of the "one" and the simultaneous change of the "other," new, unknown perspectives are shown of the "one," while, on the other hand, patterns are offered in order to approach the "other" and to allow the foreign as part of that which is one’s own.

In Encore there are a number of transition points on different formal levels. Thus the playful beginning of the opening transforms itself into a threatening, inaccessible monumentality. The texture oscillates between chamber music and orchestral sound. The dialogue (between the musicians) is almost forcefully coerced into a common language to which the individuals have to subordinate themselves, but from which they also attempt to escape again and again. Through these escape attempts, the dialogue is able to reestablish itself on another level, namely as a dialogue between formal sections.

Encore was written for the newly founded Boulez Ensemble and Daniel Barenboim.