Doppelsextett (2000)
(for ensemble)

Six woodwinds and six strings combine in this piece to make an ensemble which lacks precisely those instruments that normally function as intermediaries between high and low registers. That is, no clarinets and no violas, but instead two flautists (playing piccolo, flute and alto flute), two oboists (oboe and cor anglais) and two bassoonists (bassoon and contrabassoon), plus two violinists, two cellists and two double bassists.

This is one of a few works in which I have tried to create an organic musical form in which the musical ideas expounded at the start are the sole source of everything that develops later. In order to do this, it seemed to me that a severe restriction of the means was necessary. There is a long tradition to support this idea, especially if the discipline needed to invent new combinations of the material is maintained consistently to the very end. So I decided to write the piece using only two metres throughout, namely 2/4 and 3/8, and to give each of them different musical material.

There is a very close connection between the Doppelsextett and my piece for vocal and instrumental ensemble Quirinus' Liebeskuss (Quirinus' Loving Kiss). In that, choir and instruments alternate rapidly in an incessant dialogue, as if giving commentaries on commentaries in an endless spiral. From the first, I had an idea of the greatest possible independence of the choral and instrumental parts; of writing a work in which the vocal and instrumental ensembles with their different sounds would be interdependent but would simultaneously preserve their individual identities. The paradox was what enabled me, in the end, to compose the Double Sextet. The outcome was in truth my second Kammersymphonie.

M. K.