Antik

2023 – 2025

Schemen (string quartet no. 4)
2023 – 2025
str qt | live elec (4ch)
00:21:20

Sfumato
2025
str(9.9.7.11.0)
00:21:20

Tenebroso
2025
db(4)
00:21:20

Chiaroscuro
2024
vn, va, vc, db
00:21:20

In the summer of 2023, I had the idea of playing an iconic work of music history extremely slowly and quietly, projecting only excerpts of it electronically into the room in a modified form.

Because of its structural simplicity, I used the first 32 bars of the second movement (Andante con moto, ‘Death and the Maiden’) from Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (D. 810).

My father passed away on 4 February 2024. At his request, this movement by Franz Schubert was played at his funeral service by a string quartet assembled by Klaus Viëtor.
Thus, Schemen has unintentionally become an acoustical epitaph for my father.

While working on this piece in 2025 I made some experiments in computer-assisted composition by reworking this musical fragment in musical analogies to old painting techniques leading to three other conceptional pieces: Sfumato, Tenebroso and Chiaroscuro.