void II (2020)
(for percussion duo)

Since the planned concert of Void, a double concerto for two percussionists and orchestra, could not be performed at the Berlin Philharmonie in September 202 due to Corona regulations, I wrote Void II, which was premiered together with Dust II.

void /vɔɪd. C13 F. vuide + voider, L. vacare + vocītus.
A desert, devoid, absent. A loss of, missing, gaping wide,

The final short prose of Samuel Becketts 13 Texts For Nothing, 1947-52, is a text of great power and lucidity where intensely fragile fleeting moments, describing a mouthless murmuring ceasless voice, are juxtaposed with violent outburts of anger. I refered back to this prose again and again while completing this piece:

"...a voice murmuring a trace. A trace it wants to leave a trace, yes, like air leaves among the leaves.....

...And whose shame, at every mute micromillisyllable, and unshakeable infinity of remorse delving ever deeper in its bite, at having to hear, having to say, fainter than the faintest murmur, so many lies, so many times the same lie lyingly denied, whose the screaming silence of no´s knife in yes´s wound, it wonders....

...one day to be here, where there are no days, which is no place, born of the impossible voice the unmakable, and a gleam of light, still all would be silent and empty and dark, as now, as soon now, when all will be ended, all said, it says, it murmurs."

Samuel Beckett, Texts For Nothing, Calder Publications

RS, Sept. 2020