“Three remembrances” (1996) for marimba solo

he piece “Three Memories” for marimba solo was written as an expression of three different types of memory. The first section expresses a “hallucination” type of memory, a “vision”, something that remains as a fragment of the image, not real, and escapes. The second section is all a memory of a mood without a concrete event or image, like someone remembering the experience of standing next to a quiet stream of water and the wind playing in the tree branches or wind chimes in the surrounding silence. The third section describes an obsessive memory type that leaves no room for anything else. The piece is called “11 o’clock” and it is built in a mathematically precise way – 11 parts, each of them made up of 11 boxes in a meter of 11/16. With the help of using this meter, a feeling of breathlessness is simultaneously created on the one hand and something inevitable and mechanical on the other. Marimba`s “clicking sound” performed in this manner is currently often used in many electronic gadgets, like mobile phones or alarm clocks, which makes the association even more so vivid.

(“Introduction” – “At the Water Edge” – “11 o`clock”)

Performances:
15.05.96 Palais Wittgenstein, Duesseldorf, Germany (Dmitry Guskov)

Publications: IMC