Der Eid des Hippokrates (1984)
(for piano three-hands)

This aphoristic composition was written in January 1984 on the occasion of a publication about my work in recent years in a medical journal. As I have been spending a lot of time in waiting rooms and clinics for some time now, I thought of the noble oath again. Whether it was my desire to be treated in accordance with the chivalrous resolutions of Hippocrates or rather my curiosity about the meaning of the Greek medicine man remains to be seen. In any case, I wrote a piano piece that can be performed with three left hands, but also with a combination of right and left hands for two or three pianists. For longer passages, one hand is busy drumming sections of the original oath by means of soft, morse-like strokes on one point of the case: “I swear by Apollo the physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panakeia and all the gods and goddesses ...”.

M.K.
(Translation by Edition Peters)