Entrée

The short, ca. three-minute piece was composed at the suggestion of François-Xavier Roth, to whom it is also dedicated.

It was and is intended as the opening music for a larger symphonic program, which is already indicated by the title ENTRÉE. However, it is in no way a cheerful “festive overture,” but rather a work that suggestively reflects the situation in which it came into being. The momentum of the latent pandemic threat as well as the inward-looking reflex to it should be perceived.

Thereby, the Renaissance composer whose life, at least in his childhood years, was likewise affected by a pandemic, namely the pest, entered my inner auditory space little by little: Giovanni Gabrieli (1557–1612). Small particles of his “Canzona per dieci voci” are woven in pianissimo into the musical context in such a manner that certain near and distant effects should result without the musicians being spread throughout the space in the sense of Venetian polychorality.

In a few moments, above all toward the end in its musical impetus, the piece indirectly demonstrates the profoundly human NEVERTHELESS in the sense of Albert Camus, but concludes with a sound lingering, as it were, in the space, like a question.
York Höller, Cologne in March 2021