READER: HARMONIEMUSIK

HARMONIEMUSIK

Harmoniemusik was written during a period of both political as well as personal grief. It is the attempt to create a ‘happy place’ for an hour, even though it can never entirely escape the experience that it attempts to leave behind. The soft pulses, small melodies, and slowly emerging chords of the first movement create a consonant surface perpetually in motion. With just single repeated notes at first, then groups of notes, and eventually small motives, the seven instruments build up a seemingly tension-free harmony while continuously changing it. Movement two starts off with an exuberant Vivace that only gradually softens into a dreamlike landscape of quietly pulsating chords. The third movement alternates between slow-motion arpeggios – suggestive of warm synthesizer sounds spanning all registers of the ensemble – and fast pulses that reconnect to the textures of the first movement. A short coda that ends the hourlong piece is paradoxically surprising and familiar at the same time.

Harmoniemusik is dedicated to Sianne Ngai.