Stock: 
Format: 
Release Date: 12-03-2008
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Catalog Number: 13259-5
Barcode: 13711325959
Musical Style: Classical
Track Listing:
| Disc 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Book I [01:09] | 25 | Book III [01:02] |
| 2 | Book I [00:57] | 26 | Book III [00:30] |
| 3 | Book I [01:17] | 27 | Book III [02:13] |
| 4 | Book I [01:04] | 28 | Book III [01:00] |
| 5 | Book I [01:02] | 29 | Book III [00:47] |
| 6 | Book I [00:40] | 30 | Book III [00:59] |
| 7 | Book I [01:12] | 31 | Book III [01:03] |
| 8 | Book I [00:52] | 32 | Book III [00:51] |
| 9 | Book I [02:26] | 33 | Book III [00:46] |
| 10 | Book I [00:55] | 34 | Book III [01:40] |
| 11 | Book I [00:58] | 35 | Book III [00:53] |
| 12 | Book I [01:21] | 36 | Book III [01:12] |
| 13 | Book II [02:17] | 37 | Book IV [01:06] |
| 14 | Book II [01:20] | 38 | Book IV [00:05] |
| 15 | Book II [01:33] | 39 | Book IV [00:53] |
| 16 | Book II [00:45] | 40 | Book IV [00:57] |
| 17 | Book II [01:35] | 41 | Book IV [01:05] |
| 18 | Book II [00:55] | 42 | Book IV [01:28] |
| 19 | Book II [01:04] | 43 | Book IV [02:41] |
| 20 | Book II [00:57] | 44 | Book IV [01:18] |
| 21 | Book II [01:13] | 45 | Book IV [01:21] |
| 22 | Book II [01:05] | 46 | Book IV [01:04] |
| 23 | Book II [00:53] | 47 | Book IV [01:07] |
| 24 | Book II [01:45] | 48 | Book IV [01:05] |
Description:
This recording comes with a pocket score and is presented in an attractive box. The performance score is also available upon request from Celestial Harmonies.
“This work is subtitled 'A collection of larger and smaller pieces for piano', and led to a profound change in my musical thought and perception. I found myself straying more and more from a narrative prose, from that formal arch which binds the parts under the dominance of the whole - straying toward a freer poetic development of the sound of each moment. To achieve this, it was of course necessary to create a new space for the sounds, harmonically free, and constituted by the variety of tonal energies and impulses - continually changing, in the manner of a living organism, partaking equally of the free exchange of musical vitality.
“'Music is about listening', as Rauschenberg once sold, and it is important for any composer of today to learn from the great artists of the century. As Matisse and Picasso began to eliminate the duality of pictorial space, and Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg continued fifty years later, the change in art toward independent moments of visual perception, where every glance is the present, became clear. And in music it is quite similar, where a non-dualistic experience and conception can offer the listener the freedom of every moment, the liberation from recollection or expectation. In my 'Stundenbuch' I have attempted to follow this path. The whole cycle consists of smaller and larger pieces that follow each other without interruption.
“Alongside the pieces in the score one can find some drawings, signs and a whole series of short texts and quotes, which assisted me during the four years of composition. The system of notation was chosen to leave as much space as possible to the player, so that he or she may experience the sounds, may live with them, articulate them, and may follow them and all their vibrations and resonances. I therefore decided against a formal notation of meter, time and stopwatch, and preferred an open interpretation, such as one may find in poetic recitations, which is at once precise and free. I also widened the dynamic scale of pp to ff by a range of additional, easily readable signs to a total of 18 levels, each of which is complemented by three different accents. Together, this notation corresponds more closely to the real possibilities of the piano.
“The book of hours, or horologium, has a long tradition - in the Middle Ages it formed a collection of monastic prayers for both day and nighttime, then complemented by beautiful miniatures. In more recent times, Rainer Maria Rilke revived the tradition of the horolagium. His Stundenbuch conies the subtitle 'Of monastic life - of pilgrimage - of poverty and death'. The work of the composer and of any artist may be similar to this monastic life, in its commitment to devotion, discipline, stamina and tenacity.
“After all, today the whole essence of art is constontly being questioned - and this is alwoys an infinite joy.”
These are the words that Otte included in his Stundenbuch 1996. I may just add that it is an 'infinite joy' to meet the music and thought of Hans Otte. - Bremen, December 2006, Marita Emigholz
Translation: Béla Hartmann
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