“Póthos is written for a percussion soloist, Hímeros for percussion and harp. Both figures from Greek mythology embody forms of longing: the one, the longing for something that is elsewhere or does not exist; and Hímeros, the longing for what lies close at hand, the supposedly attainable. In this stimulating duo instrumentation, the percussion can intensify the harp’s rending quality and bring the poetic aspect of its sound into an iridescent shimmer.
A tapestry I recently saw in the Château Cadillac (in the Bordelais) illustrated this vividly: Amor, fleeing through a window, is desperately held by the foot by a figure behind him. Longing, in whatever form, does not simply exist; it must be wrested, and it is extremely fleeting. My harmonic longings have for some time belonged to the non‑locality and probability functions of tones—tones that, despite their clearly point‑like presence in the now, occupy the entire space of the piece and are at the same time indistinct (harmonic) objects. Entangled photons know no time, no gravitation; their interaction happens immediately, instantaneously. Does it then matter how great the distance between them is? If one tries to make this incomprehensibility of the microworld sensually compelling, what stands immediately side by side becomes a vast, absurd distance, and conversely that distance folds in on itself. This is no longer the ‘problem of unity’ as in Webern or Nono, but a new state of superposition.
In this, I always sense within the unity of tone, harmony, the position‑neutral field, and so on, the superimpositions of harmonic ranges and distances—entanglements as total unrest. To a certain extent, the harp’s tuning structure resists this. The fact that one can only ever obtain seven‑string constellations, and the pedals with their semitone and whole‑tone mobility, repeatedly create hollows from which it is not easy to escape when seeking the long ranges of individual tones. Almost inevitably, I found myself approaching Claude Debussy’s Prélude ‘… Ondine’, another figure of longing. And so this piece—one of the most ingenious harmonic designs of the twentieth century—receives a concluding homage: two of its fundamental material scales, Phrygian and its mirror‑image Lydian, form the final section there, and here that of the harp. Debussy also wrote the Prélude Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest. Zephyrus, the wild west wind who comes from the realm of the dead, was considered the father of the three figures of longing in ancient Greek mythology. And anyone who knows the west coast of France understands this wind. You can already tell: the harpist with whom I rehearsed this piece is French. The percussionist tempted me into writing it with his wonderful triangles: Hímeros!
(Nicolaus A. Huber)
