B&B
The two movements of Music for Piccolo may be performed in concert, either together, separated by other works, or individually. In the latter case, the composition should be entitled "Music for Piccolo I. From Something Bigger (2008)" or "Music for Piccolo II. Fibonacci Strata (Study No. 5) (2015)".
The first movement, From Something Bigger, was written for a memorial concert for Karlheinz Stockhausen which took place in Cologne, Germany on the day after what would have been his 80th birthday. Knowing that Camilla Hoitenga, to whom this movement is dedicated, would perform my small contribution to the evening, I remembered my amazement at the amount of sound the piccolo, a humble little piece of wood, could produce. I had already had my ear full of piccolo from performing alongside flautist Kathinka Pasveer in Stockhausen’s ensemble for many years. Whilst composing, I also recalled a specific trait of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s, which he revealed to me once on a train ride together: while traveling through the countryside, he would count, for example, telephone poles and organize them into bundles according to their distance from one another or their interruption, for example by a bridge. I found this refreshingly quirky and at the same time sympathetic myself, tending to do similar things.
Years later, as this four minute composition was approaching publication, I felt there should be more substance for it to merit printing. Therefore, in the Fall of 2015, I composed another work – Fibonacci Strata (Study No. 5) – in collaboration with the flautist Anja Brezavšcek, the dedicatee of the second movement. Issuing from my time with Stockhausen and related to the first movement – and exploring a love for relationships between numbers – it is a composition in a series of studies; this one dealing with layers of impulses from the Fibonacci series as the title implies, all within a fixed time frame and common starting point. Each layer is assigned a certain material or purpose; for example, each measure begins with a short fortissimo note which is the layer of ‘89’ impulses, while the layer of ‘5’ impulses determines when the character in the layer of ‘13’ impulses changes. This rather strict and artificially structured process is interrupted with two cadences, giving the player and the listener a moment to relax, reflect and regain their composure.
Mike Svoboda