Segelnde Stadt (2014)

"Art does not reproduce the visible, but art makes visible", is an often quoted statement by the Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879-1940). The painting "Segelnde Stadt" (Sailing City) is a fine example of this: various geometrical figures are joined together into something resembling a group of free-floating paper kites – which in turn resemble a city seen from a distance, a sailing city.

Klee, who himself had to chose for a long time between music and art, has with his paintings inspired many composers (Peter Maxwell Davies, Toru Takemitsu, Judith Weir, to name a few). It is easy to get the feeling that his paintings "sound", that they allow themselves to be transformed into music. This was also my feeling towards Segelnde Stadt. In my piece of the same name, I have partly tried to capture the weightless levitation and partly composed small figures which, when they are combined, form a new, unexpected pattern similar to Klee.

Many labels have been put on Klee's painting: expressionism, cubism, surrealism, naïveism, orientalism... Something I'm stuck on is the obvious mixture of simplicity and complexity, the combination of rigor and breathtaking imagination.

My piece has three parts, which are played without a break. First, a teeming, "pointillistic" introduction, where a wandering loop eventually appears in a kind of musical mosaic. Then a slower part with monotonously singing trombones in the distance. Then finally a "contour sharp" ending, where the whole orchestra come together in a simple, unison rhythm.