dust book [2022-3]

for viola d’amore

duration :: 50’

First performance :: Marco Fusi — Darmstadt Summer Courses (Germany), 10 August 2023

dust book comprises six pieces:

1. interlude
2. several canons

3. in modo parentetico

4. interlude (double)
5. in modo parentetico
6. interlude (dust)

Performance of the complete cycle is preferred, but separate performance of the following configurations is also possible:

2. // 2.-3. // 4.-5. // 4.-6. // 6.

dust book is six interconnected panels: some are punctured overlays, scattered detritus left when a substrate is removed; some are marginal commentaries, glosses, parenthetical elaborations; all are suspended from a slow-moving, impossibly delicate, frayed thread, gently suspended over the abyss, that is always in danger of disintegrating.

This piece would have been impossible without the advocacy, patient tutorials, exploratory spirit, and technical editing of Marco Fusi. It is his belief in this strange, awkward, wonderful, impossibly resonant thing that sustains this work.

Die Sprache der Neuen Musik als kulturindustrieller Sparte nimmt als Selbstverständlichkeit, was das ‘dust book’ in winzigen Schritten zu erarbeiten sich vornimmt: Die Möglichkeit musikalischer Erfahrung unter den heutigen Bedingungen von Kulturindustrie. Diese Möglichkeit ist nicht kommunizierte Vermittlung, sondern bleibt intransparent und unbewusst. Das ist zugleich die Chance, die Unmöglichkeit von teilbarer Erfahrung selbst zur geteilten Erfahrung zu machen und sich ihrer bewusst zu werden. Dieses Bewusstsein könnte die Grundlage einer neuen Musik sein.

[ The language of new music as a branch of the culture industry takes for granted what dust book undertakes to work through in tiny steps: the possibility of musical experience under the current conditions of the culture industry. This possibility is not communicated explicitly, but remains non-transparent and unconscious. At the same time, that is the chance to make the impossibility of shared experience into a shared experience, and to become aware of it. This awareness could be the basis of a new music. ]

— Jim Igor Kallenberg, neue musikzeitung