Temperierte Fluten

for piano (2005)

Duration: ca. 12 min
First performance: Berlin, 2006/06/13

GEMA No.: 9378309

Media


At least since the time of Liszt, composers are interested in the "liquid" characteristics of the piano sound, from his Water Games at Villa d'Este to Nono's serene waves suffered. This was surely made possible by the development of the modern grand piano with its extremely complex resonance characteristics. These are very difficult to describe mathematically in detail: a good reason, by the way, for not substituting the grand piano by digital simulacra.

This irrational aspect stands in sharp contrast to the tuning system of the instrument: the equal tempered tuning is an important means to control the pitch space, which is subdivided into identical smallest units.

In Temperierte Fluten ("tempered floods"), ordered elements which are relatively easy to grasp (superpositions of fourths, perodicities), interact with complex phenomena, which can only be experienced as more global qualities, such as interferences and resonant feedbacks.