From the Garden (2023)
(for piano)

I have known the sculptor and visual artist Alexander Polzin for many years and in the course of our friendship we discovered that we have both worked independently on projects concerned with the same subject matter: Giordano Bruno, Heiner Müller and many others. So we began to discuss what we might be able to do together and Alexander mentioned Walter Benjamin's text on the painting by Paul Klee, Angelus Novus: Engel der Geschichte (The Angel of History). As I began to think about how to approach this text and the painting behind it, one of the strong impulses I felt was helplessness in the face of the inevitable, the storm garnering mountains of rubble and chaotic wreckage, the storm which Benjamin calls "progess". And thus I began to think about origins. What is the source of the inexorable descent? The expulsion of the angel from the garden was of course also our own expulsion.

This piece is dedicated to Alexander Polzin.

© Sidney Corbett Schwetzingen, November 2023