About Clairière (Clearing) for orchestra (2021)

"Clairière" (from Latin clarus: "action of clearing, clearing up").

Clearing in ordinary language means something like "forest clearing" ... to clear a wood is to cut some trees in the forest, opening a clearing.

This heart center is probably the clearing itself; however, it is not an external destination, such as a distant place that one reaches after leaving one's own place of residence, but a place that has always been near, which one nevertheless glimpses only rarely and suddenly by entering the depths of the forest.

"The paths are given as the forest is thinned; the giving and releasing is another image for the clearing itself in its multiple aspects: as lightening, as clearing, as illuminating, as the belonging together of light and dark, of unconcealment and concealment.

I began work on the orchestral piece Lichtung in April 2021 and completed the sketch in August 2021.

The work reflects the subtle changes of color and mood of a clearing in summer.

In addition to a large orchestra (with an extended percussion apparatus), it also features instruments such as alto recorder, concert guitar, harmonica, and wind chimes.

Introduction: Starting from the bass notes G-sharp (A-flat) and D, the finest resonant sounds unfold in the most diverse shadings and ramifications. After a restrained beginning with sparse sounds of woodwinds and high strings, a condensation of the harmonic spectrum develops with the introduction of the piano. Above the tremolo of the fourteen-part strings, delicate air notes of the flutes unravel.

Time and sound linger in suspension. The sounds dissolve until only a harmonica remains, breathy on a long fermata. Gradually the tempo resumes, rising to agitato molto.

In stormy tempo, permanently enlarging groups of sixteenth notes (starting from an ascending Fibonacci row) crowd each other, driven by the permanent motor activity of a large percussion apparatus. Pebbles and various percussion woods as "instruments of the forest" play a supporting role here. Chains of trills of the various instrumental groups and complex glissando figures intensify the progression. A cascade of key noises from the winds and "col legno" figures (with the bow wood) from the divided strings lead to the climax with a tutti cluster in quadruple fortissimo and the use of various metal plates. In the course of the very long reverberation, the epilogue begins. Echoing sounds from the muted brass sections alternate with a quartet of four solo double basses. Above the recumbent string figures, aleatoric wind figures branch out at a wide variety of tempos, reminding us "from afar" of the agitated middle section. The ending is marked by various wind chimes of bamboo timbres that slowly fade away with the pizzicato sounds of the strings. The composition is dedicated to my friend, the forester Dieter.

Heideblick, August 2021

In this way, "the clearing, the open, is free not only for light and dark, but also for the reverberation and the echoing, for the sounding and the fading away" ... The naming of the clearing as a "place of silence" also refers to the "ringing of silence".

(all quotations from: Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927) as well as Amoroso: "Heidegger Lichtung")

Project supported by a Gema grant 2021 - 2022