ASCENT AND PAUSE

Markus Stockhausen

ASCENT AND PAUSE

for solo trumpet and string orchestra

Many years ago, I saw this painting by Johannes Itten at an exhibition in Essen. It was the only painting I liked. It gave me the feeling that here, at last, was a painting that related to me. I have never forgotten it.

Johannes Itten, a Kandinsky student, was an important Bauhaus artist and teacher. His colourful images are full of life, freshness and strength. The geometry provides order, but the paintings still seem lively and spontaneous.

This is also what I am looking for in my piece: the shifting relationship between composition and improvisation. I love spontaneity, reacting to my surroundings (including the things I have created myself), and the openness to what is new, unexpected.

When Mario Brunello, organiser of the concert series “Note depinte” (Painted Notes) in Milan, invited me to write something for them, I immediately thought of Itten’s “Aufstieg und Pause” (Ascent and Pause) and turned the title into the programme for my own piece. I wrote it in September 2003, relatively quickly – unexpectedly for me, within a week.

There is a short, initial improvisation which prepares the listener for the sound of strings and flugelhorn. Then my ‘ascent’ begins: an eventful cooperation, in which the number seven plays a dominant role. Canonic continuations of the theme finally lead to a happy improvisation, reminiscent of my time as a member of the Rainer Brüninghaus Trio in the early 1980s.
(CD "Continuum", ECM).

A pause in the ascent leads to a rather thoughtful, muted trumpet mood. The atmosphere is coloured by Miles Davis’ famous Harmon sound.

The strings now play a contrapuntal interlude, in which the number seven again plays a role. I cant deny that Johann Sebastian Bach's music has had a great influence in my life. Even as a child I often played his preludes and fugues on the piano. Performances of his Second Brandenburg Concerto have been among the happiest moments in my life. So this small interlude and a number of other passages in the first part may be a small, unintended homage to Bach.

The ‘ascent’ resumes with a more energetic and rhythmic open trumpet, leading to a second jazzy improvisation. My experiences in jazz have become second nature to me (or third, next to classical and contemporary music). I have always played not only in small ensembles but also in big-bands, so the ‘ascent’ ends with a short tutti riff, full of intensity.

Then the ‘pause’ comes. I wanted to make time stand still, to pause, and to express this musically. Small harmonic changes, hardly a movement, sound-meditation. Thought has no more food; peace emerges. First the flugelhorn improvises, then at the end, the piccolo trumpet with gentle, clear lines, encouraging the strings to taste this improvisational freedom. The instruments flow harmoniously together, leading to the end of the piece – a quiet conclusion.

Markus Stockhausen 14/11/03

From a live recording of the concert with Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss am Rhein conducted by Lavard Skou Larsen we released a CD in 2008 under the title SYMBIOSIS – Works by Markus Stockhausen

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