[traduction française non disponible]
“Material can be anonymous. Consider, for example, the middle voices in medieval
hymn books: unadorned, not artful, a simple handiwork, a leisurely alternation of
single notes. It might be a scale, or, beyond music, the stones of a wall, not
artfully stacked, but simply and properly, the formal idea being nothing other than
that of a wall.
When I was working on the String Quartet (1988), I encountered the painting of
Agnes Martin. I saw clear-cut forms, not overgrown with rhetoric and figuration.
Instead, sensuality, radiance and intensity gripped the entire space.
There was a kind of visibility to her art, which I felt corresponded to the
audibility in my music. Audibility: the moment when sound waves move in space and the
air touches the body. The eardrum is the sensory connection between the outside and
the inside world: we hear the sound and the composition.
Over the years it became more and more clear to me, that there is no anonymous
material - each material has its shape, and as soon as it exists in space and time,
it carries a distinct handwriting. Anonymous material is rather an idea that brings
the work to a point where concentration on what is essential becomes possible, and
allows one to feel that he is starting from zero.” —Jürg Frey (English Translation:
Michael Pisaro)