Major Seconds - night walking for double bass (2008)

- durata ca. 8:30
- premiered by Uli Fussenegger in Venice on 29th March 2008

EN
During last years, I have been interested in possibilities of composing with schematic pitch structures, i.e. common chords, and above all scales – the chromatic, the diatonic, the whole-tone scale. What interests me about scales is that they are entities with distinct and immediately recognizable character, and yet emotionally neutral, that they are loaded with specific energy, yet they lack drama. Proceeding stepwise on a scale up and down gives the music motion and coherence, and the composer, once things have been set in motion, can just  sculpt the music gently – insert some perturbation here and there, accent some note and omit another, emphasize an interval other than the minor or major second... Within this context any step out of the system can be heard and easily becomes significant. In this piece the whole-tone scale serves as a kind of unstable background moving back and forth,
upon which certain intervals alien to the scale appear from time to time with shameless, nocturnal expressivity.
(2008)

CZ
Hlavním materiálem je celotónová stupnice, respektive ony dvě její podoby, porůznu se zasouvající jedna do druhé. Hlavní technikou pak rozdělení funkce levé a pravé ruky, simultánní hra pizzicato a arco, jež má za následek vznik dvou zvukových vrstev, někdy vzdálených, jindy na dotek se přibližujících. Téměř programní transformace starého dobrého kráčejícího basu (walking bass) do podoby peripatetického nokturna – hudby nočního procházení se a bloudících myšlenek. Skladba je věnována Ulimu Fusseneggerovi, který ji v roce vzniku též premiéroval.
(2014)