Noema is a rhetoric figure that highlights meaning. It describes the moment in polyphonic vocal music, at which the voices unite in homophony to present the essential thought of a text.
Far more than in its origin I have been interested in the semantic development of this rhetoric figure (as well as of many others), though: its complex path through the history of western music into the confusion of musical meaning that dominates our present time.
The objectified remnants of the Noema in stereotypical cadences of 19th century piano etudes defined the starting-material of the piece. Ten-voice chords in fortissimo, repeated endlessly present meaningless celebration of power, of domesticated nature.
The deconstruction of this etude-objects might lead to the Noema of the piano itself: the beauty of the vibrating string, its specific transient-effects, its temporality, and the beauty of these wide chords, distributed over the entire keyboard, which are specific for the instrument and can give its sound the characteristic meaning of wideness and depths.

Hans Thomalla, December 2004