“Les concerts ne sont jamais de veritable musique, on doit renoncer a y entendre, ce qu’il y a de beau dans l’art.”

2024
piano, 2 winds (any combination of flute/clarinet), 2 strings (any combination of violin/viola/cello), percussion (1 player). ca. 6–9m

Each of 88 keys are played (depressed, not necessarily sounded) once per hand.

Eight lines are read in the percussion part, taken from Liszt and Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein’s eulogy Life of Chopin:

compassion

robes of peace

clouds

mal du pays

“brama assai, poco spera, e nulla chiede.” (Tasso)

the Bird of Paradise, which it was once thought never slept

first breath of the North wind

melody from Heaven

The title is Chopin as remembered by his student Emilie von Gretsch:

Concerts are never real music; in them we must give up hearing what is most beautiful in art.

(note December 12, 2024)