PLAN TO UNPLAN was about precarious spaces between homo ludens and homo sapiens. It was about precarious moments in many different aspects - above all, it was about finding out how the boundaries are in different formations. In chamber music, you can write much more extreme; in orchestral music, even a slight derivation from the norm can bring about significant uncertainty. It was about writing the book BOOK OF CHORDS to unfold the essence of my work for both prefessionals and laymen as I believe artistic research should also be some sort of fundamental research for society. And it was about switching places with the conductor to determine whether it is ethically justifiable to place musicians in precarious situations.

There has also been the DAUMENKINO, a simple artwork about daring. I included sketches by 55 composers and musicians to get an insite into their thoughts while they're working or to see a personal foot print that we usually don't have access to. 

Due to the pandemic, I didn't have many opportunities to explore precarious moments with musicians. In chamber music, the precarious moments can be so extreme that one has to try them out with musicians. Commissioned work required me to write a lot of orchestral music, and I focused on my work on my chords that I find on the internet.

For years I have carried those collections of chords in numerous notebooks with me. I think these chords make up a large part of my musical language. Without them, I wouldn't really know how to start a piece. I wanted to share this treasure, as it appears to me, and share my process and thoughts and document them - reflect on them and make them accessable for others. It was important to me that the BOOK OF CHORDS could serve as a support for conductors and musicians as well as an access point for the untrained musician - any listener.

There has been a switch in the love for the imperfect. I used to seek it on many different levels, today it is essentially only on chords - pitches. However, I am still interested in all aspects that influence the expression of these chords. 

At the beginning of the research, my concern was to integrate chamber musical precarious situations into the orchestral world, or to find out to what extent they can be woven into the orchestra and its tradition. How far can you go? Instead, however, the opposite has emerged. To what extent can I incorporate the quite precarious chords of my orchestral world into chamber music? Is it possible to divide originally 16-voice chords between two players, to hear out the essential tones of the chords, and to come as close as possible to the expression of the analyzed chord? My experience has been that the loudest notes are not always the most important for the expression, and sometimes you even have to add non-chord tones to get closer to the expression.

What was clear from the outset was that chamber musical precarity is amplified in orchestral writing. However, the same is true vice versa. Orchestral precariousness is also amplified in chamber musical writing.

Even the choreographic element, which I initially only considered as a precarious moment in performance, has a great consequence on the pitch material. How do I write the chord into the various instrument groups? If I always write it from bottom to top, I will always achieve a kind of glissando from top to bottom / bottom to top in the choreographic conducting. Which is not always desirable for the expression of the music. So, harmony is closely linked to this precarious element.

Also it became clear that there is not only precariousness for the performer, there is also a precariousness for the composer, when writing and expecting very detailed dynamics and frequencies in large chords of up to 32 tones. Exploring spectral chords is not always obvious. The score can be interpreted differently, especially with smaller formations. Depending on how the differences in dynamic and pitch are executed, different soundscapes emerge. Additionally, playing quarter tones can vary greatly from orchestra to orchestra. Especially with chords derived from a major chord, for example, orchestral musicians tend to adjust and play in tune. I find this particularly precarious because then the chord slips into superficiality and mutates into an expression opposite to the one I intended. The conscious chord, aware of its mold and expiration date, then sounds freshly born, as if it had never existed, and is unaware of its history. The larger the orchestra's instrumentation, the less one is exposed to these possibilities as the outcome is less dependend on single players. But in my opinion, there is also a certain beauty in this possibility of failure. The piece will show several different faces, stand in different lights, and thus gain a bit more autonomy and life of its own. This is something that is very dear to me, but it also entails accepting a loss of control.

Ultimately, what interests me fundamentally at the end of my research is to find these precarious elements on the fundamental pillars of music: mainly pitch, but also tempo, rhythm and dynamics. I have combined those though with aspects that imperfectinate the stability of these pillars and will continue to explore the bounderies even in the future.

The chords with their inherent imperfections (as they refer to well known chord constellations), and close relation to the human voice help me to find a certain transience that I believe is very characteristic of our time. The chords are in my opinion aware of that they have an expiry date. And I believe it's a strong characteristic I find in society of just our time.