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The compositional starting-point of Affirmation / Auslöschung was the experience of disappearing trust into stable
structural systems. For me, coherence – relations between seemingly individual musical figures or sounds – could
not any longer be guaranteed by preexisting systems, neither systems of grammar nor of meaning. Coherence, still the aim of
my compositional approach, would rather be the fragile, momentary result of confrontations: e.g. the confrontation of affective,
affirmative stereotypes with subtle and complex individual figures. Coherence, emerges momentarily at the edge of far more
brutal processes; processes that maintain Auslöschung – annihilation – of individual figures as one extreme,
affirmation – the stagnation of a development of a musical gesture in its affirmative stereotype – as another
extreme.
There are numerous oppositions, that define the “starting point” of the piece: solo-instruments
(with rather fragile sounds) vs. the simplistic symphonic apparatus; focus on sonorous details (the “magnifying glass”)
vs. expansive, affirmative stereotype figures; spoken text as a bearer of both rhythmic as well as semantic meaning vs. text
as pure affirmative gesture. The form of the piece, it’s narration, seems more like a movement of the musical elements
between those oppositions, defining relations to each other mostly in their phases of change or mutation.
Hans
Thomalla 2002
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