Ein Brief (1985)
(Concert scene for mezzo-soprano and orchestra)

The project of writing a piece in which the longed-for demand Prima la musica, dopo le parole! was to be realized has occupied me again and again in a roundabout way. For example, I once said that texts for composers are actually pretexts for arriving at a musical context. There are certainly many different ways of approaching this old and always fruitful debate about the relationship between music and text. Mendelssohn's “Songs without words” are ultimately an extreme variant of the problem, in that they dispense with the singer's participation altogether. And at the same time, these cantabile piano pieces represent one of those ingenious solutions that leave the actual task unsolved. Mendelssohn's cycle of works probably had a similar effect on his contemporaries, as if today - and in contrast to then - one would suddenly speak of words without songs. The choice of this title would certainly have been a stimulating and sweetly provocative challenge in the middle of the 19th century.

When I initially spoke of detours in the search for plausible models, it was not least because of my composition. The original idea was actually to set an authentic, existing letter to music. It was clear from the outset that it was to be a love letter. During the selection of the text, however, I discovered that the work had to be realized not with the words of the letter itself, but by translating impressions and human emotions into music, by reproducing a message with non-verbal means.

I then decided to keep the original idea, but to make one major change: the letter should consist of only two words: My love. After that, no explicit message should be audible, only the musical emotions triggered by the supposed text. Whether this is a farewell letter or a specific message is, of course, an open question and requires no further discussion.

If music can resonate in words, what happens when it reveals itself to us, even wordlessly?

M.K.
(Translation by Edition Peters)