Pseudomorphosis II

"Pseudomorphosis" is a term used in mineralogy to describe the process in which a crystal consisting of one mineral is having the form of another which it has replaced. The concept is borrowed by German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) in his theory about the life and death of the civilizations (The Decline of the West, 1918-22, subtitled in French "Esquisse d’une morphologie de l’histoire universelle"). The main idea of this piece is to explore the dramatical potentialities of a sole material, constantly repeated and intensified while being more and more stretched in time. Another idea was to reintroduce the tonal music principle of tensions and releases by using the tritone as a phenomenon of harmonic tension. The formal design of the piece is based on four sections (played attacca), corresponding to the four transpositions of a single unfolding of material. Although it might be closed to variation form, the process-like character of the music and its strong teleological dimension transforms this remote model into a sui generis structure made of concentration and continuity.