Aphorism

Arash Yazdani (*1985) – Aphorism (2016, Estonian premiere)

Santa Bušs (*1981, Latvia) – Ich kann dich noch sehen… (2020) 

Elo Masing – Touch solo viola piece for young musicians (2021, premiere)

Ülo Krigul – The Wolf Queen solo clarinet piece for young musicians (2021, premiere)

Elo Masing (*1984) –  The Garden of Forking Paths for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola, cello (2021, premiere) 

Justina Repečkaitė (*1989, Lithuania) – Acupuncture (2014) 

Ülo Krigul (*1978) – streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch for flute, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, piano, violin, viola, cello, electronics (2021, premiere)

Aphorism (2016) for flute, clarinets, piano, violin, cello is written for ensemble Lemniscate. The term ‘aphorism’ was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, in which the first sentence of the work is: “Life is short, art long…, judgment difficult.” The term was later applied to statements of all kinds of philosophical, moral, or literary principles. In modern usage an aphorism is generally a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation.

Throughout the piece, different lines from texts of different literatures have been used. The musicians are asked to contemplate and meditate on the lines, both in figure and essence, and apply them to the indicated musical lines. The texts are from different eras and cultures/languages. They include lines from works by Persian poetry of Rumi and Hafez, Martin Luther’s Psalm 130 in Germain, Tao Te Ching by Laozi and the Hymn To Earth, The Mother of All from Homeric Hymns of an unknown author in ancient Greek. The lines are used on different orders and combinations, in order to create nets of various pulsations. Yet more importantly the meditative demands of this piece invites the musicians and listeners to delve further into the realm of sound and contemplation. (Arash Yazdani)

Ich kann dich noch sehen… (2020) for violin and grand piano. The starting point for this piece is a striking late poem by Paul Celan (1920–1970), one of the most important poets of European modernism… He was a Jew who wrote in German and lived in Paris… Survivor of the death camps and suicide before he was fifty… Poet who’s works are incomparable and original, also experimental and innovative… And all these facets we can find also in his 1967 masterpiece… Some say this poem is both very personal, as well as fulfilled with mysticism, echoes deep sufferings and speaks about death, others interpret it as a reminiscence of lost love, or say he sings about eternal light… And in my score I follow it word by word… The piece was commissioned by Pēteris Vasks Foundation and premiered by Magdalēna Geka and Georgs Kjurdians in August 2020. (Santa Bušs)

Ich kann dich noch sehen
Ich kann dich noch sehen: ein Echo,
ertastbar mit Fühl-
wörtern, am Abschieds-
grat.

Dein Gesicht scheut leise,
wenn es auf einmal
lampenhaft hell wird
in mir, an der Stelle,
wo man am schmerzlichsten Nie sagt.
(Text: Paul Celan)

I Can Still See You
I can still see you: an Echo,
to be touched with Feeler-
Words, on the Parting-
Ridge.

Your face softly shies away,
when all at once there is
lamp-like brightness
in me, at the Point,
where most painfully one says Never.
(Text: Paul Celan; translation: allpoetry.com)

The Garden of Forking Paths (2021, premiere). “…an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent and parallel times. That fabric of times that approach one another, fork, are snipped off, or are simply unknown for centuries…” – J. L. Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” (Elo Masing)

Acupuncture (2014) for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, alto, cello. This composition explores attacks of sounds, its continuity and motion connecting this material in a metaforic way with Acupuncture. In order to create musical ideas encoded within many levels of the music’s structure, I created the blueprint mapped from fibonacci numbers. This natural structure guides material that progress from the collective mass texture to the individual polyphonic lines for each instrument. (Justina Repečkaitė)

Streeeeeeeeeetch (2021, premiere)
There have been times in music history when the developmental leaps in technology have expanded the opportunities of creative expressive means. Just like it is possible to enhance and analyse very small or very distant objects through a microscope or telescope, technology has also enabled us to reach a point in music which our ears cannot. The microphone and telephone serve a similar purpose.

In one way or another, this is, of course, a distortion. The human desire to see further over the edge, behind the horizon. Or deep into one’s eye, through the cornea. The distortion mainly becomes visible due to changes in the objects. One of the key features of sound – especially musical sound – is its temporal dimension. Placing a “magnifying glass” on a sound fragment, we can “make a mountain out of a molehill”. 

Already for some time, the capacities of computer processors are so extensive that we can manipulate the characteristics of sound, thus enabling us to monitor its change over time with a different kind of attention. Streeeeeeeeeetch – as the title indicates – is based on a stretch, the 10-fold stretch of one recorded sound. In the creative process, sometimes the original source or form of the material loses its initial point and dimension. Here, too – one short random sound defines the temporal flow of a 10-minute composition. This provides the form and one only has to choose which parts to shed more light on, and which ones to leave in the background. The instruments are edited on the recorded sound, following and enhancing the processes according to their performance style and technique. (Ülo Krigul)

Founded in 2012, Ensemble for New Music Tallinn is a collective with a non-permanent membership. The ensemble strives to offer its audiences the very best of contemporary music, provide contemporary composers an opportunity to be heard, and enrich the local and international cultural scene with their meticulously chosen programmes and approach. The artistic director of the ensemble is composer and conductor Arash Yazdani. The program includes pieces from composers with various backgrounds and aesthetics, with one strong common thread, of being originated in Baltic states. The term Aphorism was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates in which the first sentence of his work is: “Life is short, art long…, judgment difficult.”