René Mense
Composer

 

 

 

Pas de ne pas (1996)
In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu
for alto flute, violin, violoncello, guitar and piano, 6´

  I composed Pas de ne pas in the spring of 1996 in memory of the great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who passed away at the age of 65 in February of the same year.

  In my piece, I took up an aspect of Takemitsu's music that seemed to me to be especially characteristic, namely, a seemingly subliminal stasis in the harmony which is something that I perceive to a greater of lesser extent in all of his works.

  A "static harmony", is only a paradox, however, when harmony is not understand as an amalgamation of all of the various chords appearing in a composition, but rather, in the traditional Western sense, mainly as the progression of distinctly graduated chords. The implicated hierarchies of the chords among one another create movement and obviates the concept of stasis as standstill.

  With Takemitsu, who knew Western music intimately, I perceive no such hierarchy of sonorities. Rather, it seems to me as if the curious non-mobility of his chords was offset by the fact that each sound possesses a specific inner velocity, a vibration unique unto itself. This is not only due to Takemitsu's artful instrumentation, but also to the precise intervallic combination of the sounds. Thus, one can say that in this non-hierarchically organized harmony, an apparent movement - which also implies change - is created.

  The title Pas de ne pas is an attempt to actually name this paradox. And it is clear that the shift of meaning from pas (step) to ne pas, the negative form, can really only directly work in French. One could approximate in English: "a step, that is withdrawn the moment it is taken".

< back

 

 

 

 

 

Legal notice | Photography by Susanne E. Fraatz | English Translation by Laurie Schwartz | Design by Frank Ralf