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"The Farbtonstücke make use of striking musical processes
or structures to represent a thought which is often logical or
philosophical in nature. (...) One might say that the key characteristic
of a Farbtonstück is the way it blithely juxtaposes things
which are irreconcilable or have never before been brought together.
In doing so it creates a context which, through contradictions,
raises the question of overriding coherence."
In these words
Andreas F. Raseghi describes an idea which, over the years, has
become the starting point for many of his works. His Erstes
Buch der Farbtonstücke (‘First Book of Farbtonstücke’)
unites into a self-contained cycle seven short pieces written
between 1979 and 1984. The second book, which he started in 1987,
is more open-ended in its form. The pieces are more differing
(...) and are not directly interrelated. The second book forms
the metaphysical complement of the first.
(...)
A cosmos of acoustic events opens (...) in Besteigung der hallenden
Öde (‘Ascension of the resounding wasteland’) (...) Microtonal
reverberations from the upper partials of the overtone series
intermingle with tempered neighbour-notes to form pulsating interference
patterns. Beats generated by a sharply struck second are perceived
as a trill and then imitated by the pianist. (...)
The minuscule interval of time lying between two keys struck almost
simultaneously generates a lower sound, the pitch of which may
be controlled by the pianist. Raseghi’s term for this (...) phenomenon
is "Zeittöne" (Zeit tones). (...) The piece reaches
a climax with the so-called ‘phantom tones’, a very timely phenomenon
in our age of virtual reality. Here the notes of a chord are regarded
as combination tones of superordinate but hidden ‘cores’ or ‘virtual’
sonorities. (...)
Besteigung der hallenden Öde makes us sharpen our
auditory faculty. It invites us to pursue sonorities and to eavesdrop
upon them, thereby leading us into a world of sense perception
in which time is no longer of essence, a world in which space
has been made to resound.
Michael
Iber
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