Description

Double, originally an old baroque term for the diminution-decorated repetition of a dance movement, means for my string quartet – pluralized to doubles – to think of …the music primarily based on the principle of modified repetition. This does not happen due to fixed, recurring characteristics (such as in Darabukka), but within much more elementary, therefore more flexible and free compositional phenomena. Repetition creates sympathy, attention, joins together, even separates when it appears in the sense of quotation marks. Repetition encourages comparison, promotes listening for differences, that is: separates and sharpens the change performance of the individual parameters in their assembly, for example: same tone / different duration / always the same bow length / different bow speed or: A tone as a sustained harmonic value is opposed to its internal rhythmic structure. However, the relationship between staying and changing can only be experienced across the various parameters or intersections. In one single exception, a parameter dimension can vary itself: it is the middle tone of the entire tone space, which, moving in sixteenth-tone steps, can repeat itself harmonically identically, but can sound at different acoustic levels. In analogy, the tempo space is designed as a mirror repetition according to the scale degrees of the metronome. And a few more doubles: a pop rhythm, a disco rhythm, part of a South African song “Iza kunjatel’i Afrika” and “It’s a reaper, it’s called death… Take care of yourself Blümelein” (a European pamphlet song). (Nicolaus A. Huber, 1987)