For many years, I have been repeatedly asked by solo guitarists and guitar duos to write pieces for them. The Aleph Guitar Quartet and I have finally brought it off! The piece is called Der entkommene Orpheus (The Escaped Orpheus).

In the old equal rights movement everything was treated as equally as possible, right from the beginning. The tones felt democratically happy. Only discontent found cause to complain. It ultimately hated this complex explicitness. The meaning, also in cases of definite tendencies in the piece, should never be able to lead a definite life. This piece, naturally, is just a tiny contribution!

In the myth, Orpheus even enchanted stones and trees, turned around too soon to look at his beloved Eurydice (just think of the punctuality fanatic Schönberg – at least according to Richard Buhlig), refused the service of Dionysus – and he, who had plucked the strings of the lyre his whole life long, was now himself torn up by the Thracian Maenads as a punishment. But his head and his lyre floated over the sea and landed on Lesbos. A string is a string is a side!!!

Like a coded word, this text is placed at the service of the varied role of the organiser of New Music. Like an equation. Shouldn’t an organiser ever actually turn around towards a lover, so that the Furies of present-day responsibility do not drive him into a state of inner conflict?

Nicolaus A. Huber
Translation: David Babcock (CD NEOS, 2017)