Performed by Giusto Chamber Orchestra on the occasion of my 60th birthday, April 6, 2024 at OMA. 

The material is taken from Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 (in F major). I could have used any other classical orchestral piece as a pool. Symphony No. 8 is less well-known and the motifs are therefore not immediately recognizable. Nevertheless, the Beethovenian style is of course imprinted in the material; you could also call it 'sound'.
I process this sound as something found; following the principle of montage. This raises the question of the concept of the material: 'musical material' is always already a mediated material; in this respect, all composing is in principle montage.
One might take my string quartet Art for comparison, in which I use a similar compositional procedure, but the material here has more the quality of raw material; it is simple combinations of numbers.
Thus, a distinction must be made between 'material' and 'composition', whereby 'material' describes a pre-structured state and 'composition' a form that is cut out of the material.
'Listening' means following this distinction; music ultimately stands and falls with it.

Beethoven Square

Orchestra

16 string instruments playing in different tempo layers each, continuous changes of pitch-, tempo-, and dynamic relations.

Turn

An idea of a traditional music from a non existing tradition, where different rules apply. Voice part and piano part are independent of each other. Temporal and harmonic relations are to some degree indeterminate; i.e. result from choices that the players make. The lyrics are just syllables from an unknown language (disassembled words from actual languages). Premiered on Transparent sound festival, Budapest, 2021, by Balint Barath (piano) and Lenke Kovacs (voice).

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two of a kind

Casual Music

ART L

ART M

Ezz - Thetics 1052 - 01 - Inert Mass

BSQ1

BSQ2

BSQ3

BSQ4

BSQ5

FoCC 12 May 2024

quintet for viloin, flute, euphonium, contrabass and piano

Slash

COLUMN for orchestra (2023)

The underlying concept was to create a plain orchestral sound whose changing instrumentation and registration can be observed from bar to bar without being distracted by "musical ideas". The title Column refers to the form of the work: it is structured in columns. 
The most important parameter in orchestral music is the plasticity of the sound. If the solo piece is a drawing, the ensemble piece a painting, then the orchestra piece is a sculpture. In order to emphasize this quailty, I have reduced the inventory of material to a minimum: Semi-tone glissandi for the winds and repeating quarter-tone sequences for the strings. What changes from bar to bar are the combination of instruments, the order of the entries and the ratios of register, duration and volume. Like most of my compositions, the piece is based on a structure model that determines every element of the composition.

Column

rite II.

rite I

Lope, for violin solo (2024) performed by Erika Litván
The essence of the instrumental solo is to explore the limits of what is playable. The performer is faced with a technical challenge that can only be mastered through excessive practice. It is not so much a question of reproducing the musical text flawlessly - if that were the case, the notes could also be divided between several instrumentalists to make the task easier - but rather of making the challenge plastically tangible. The performer is deliberately overstrained in order to be observed in failing the challenge; because failure is the essence of art. Only the failed work of art points beyond itself, beyond its thingness. On the horizon of failure, the idea of perfection shimmers through as an aspiration.   
That which can succeed is not worth the effort. That's what machines are there for. The human factor reveals itself in tangible effort. Failing means to give one's utmost. Those who do not exhaust themselves do not know what failure means. Those who never fail do not know their limits, and those who do not know them cannot exceed them. Exceeding one's limits means "failing better".
One can only fail at what is technically feasible. Where there is no prospect of success, there is no chance of failure either. Every single note in this piece, every interval, every sequence is playable in and of itself, but every single one of the 420 bars represents a hurdle that must be taken with momentum and carries the danger of stumbling. The mechanism is obvious, so that the listener immediately registers the slightest impurity. Tension arises from the comparison of the tone to be expected with the one that actually sounds. The listener follows the hurdles with a held breath. Every wrong note is balanced in the mind, every note hit provides relief.

lope

4 more Canons-4

Cello played by Matthias Lorenz www.matlorenz.de
Premiered on Blurred Edges Festival of current Music Hamburg, June 13. 2025

postal piece 2 tide for cello solo

Ratio for Organ, pertforemd by Kerstin Petersen on Blurred Edges Festival of current music, Hamburg, 2025
The twelve notes are spread over eight octaves, in groups of three for each keyboard. These groups circulate at different tempos, so that different overlaps occur with each run. Every twelve bars, one of the three tones changes from one group to the next. This changes the octave, timbre, duration and speed of the circulation. However, this only applies under the condition that we attribute the identity of a tone to its pitch. If, on the other hand, we define the tone in terms of timbre, duration and group membership, only the pitch changes.

Ratio

Hoquetry, for vocal ensemble, multitrack-recording, voices:  Jenny Fadranski, Anna Weißenfels. The score is graphical, the text is a letterist cut-up from a random text.

hoquetry

4-track recording, performed by Zach Wilson 2024
The canon is a technique in which polyphony is gained by phase-shifting a single part. This technique can be applied not only to melodies, but in principle to any sonic form process: phase-shifted acceleration and deceleration creates polyrhythmic interference; phase-shifted increase and decrease in volume creates perspective depth. To observe these phenomena, I have developed the form of the four-stroke. 
The sonic progression here takes place in four phases of a permanent rotational movement, each of which involves an increase or decrease in dynamics and tempo, so that in cross-section each part is always executed in different levels. Through the overlapping of accelerations and decelerations, the sound comes to a standstill, and the listener can explore the depth of the sound space instead of following a timeline. The source material is kept as purpositive as possible not to distract the attention from the plastic process of modulating the sound mass.

4 Canons for Vibraphone II

Semi-improvised music for two string instruments. The material is defined, the process is improvised. Performed 2011 at Hörbar, Hamburg, by Christopher Williams: doublebass and Johnny Chang: viola.

01 solo or duo

Serenade in limbo

Beethoven Square for orchestra

10 Studies on irregular rhythms for piano, 2011, performed 2012 by Frank Abbinanti.
In 2012, I visited Chicago to see Frank, who was going to perform some of my music in an upcoming concert. During my stay, Frank and I shared a loft in downtown Chicago that belonged to a friend of his and Frank played piano all day long. One evening, he just switched on the hard disc recorder and played my piece. I had heard him play it several times before, and each time it lasted between 10 and 15 minutes. But this time he took a completely different approach, bringing more of his own musicianship to the piece and thus raising it to a new level. However, the score is very open to improvisation; the parts for the right and left hands are notated separately and can be freely combined.

10studies

Premiered by Lietzeorchester, Berlin, at Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche July 2025.
I turned sixty last year and thought it was about time I took on the orchestra. I had been looking for a way to tackle this format for a long time. Since, as a visual artist, I lack the compositional tools for harmonization and orchestration, it made sense to work with a ready-made material. My music is always about observing processes. The source material is arbitrary, as it has no intrinsic aesthetic value. So the focus is not on the sound as such, but rather on the processes conducted within the sound. The selection of the material follows pragmatic criteria: it must be suitable for carrying out the corresponding processes.  
I have developed a form type for this, which I call 'column form'. The 'column' is formed by a single bar cut out of an orchestral piece of my choice. The process consists of shifting the individual instrumental parts against each other from bar to bar according to a certain formula, so that each time new harmonies and timbres are created.

Nikolaus Gerszewski is a trained visual artist and self-trained composer of experimental music, born 1964 in Hamburg, currently living in Budapest, Hungary, where he has been teaching experimental soundproduction at the university of fine arts, since 2014. 

"The term ‘experimental music‘ means to my understanding, music that results from an experimental arrangement. The notation follows a procedure model, which substitutes the compositional decision making process. Depending on the listener’s mindset the sounding result may be found intersting or boring, beautiful or annoying. I have never been very much interested in sound as such, or even beauty as such, whatever that means. The sound of music is the trace of a thought process, and all that matters, is that the idea takes shape as clearly as possible." Since 2021 Nikolaus is a member of the composer's collective Frog Peak Music

Nikolaus Gerszewski

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