René Staar

60 Mal op. 14/Nr. 8

The basic idea of the work is simple: the musical letters of the name Sigrid Wiesmann in two different harmonized shapes and their respective forms (retrograde, inversion, inversion retrograde) are played in three different transpositions in their entirety, and in a fourth in three-quarters (quasi as a coda). The execution, however, is complex, because the sequence does not follow simple principles of variation, but rather the division ratios 2:3:5, which determine the relations of the individual tempi. This results in a form that has nothing to do with expositions or reprises in the classical sense, but rather represents three different processes, with the coda aiming to present the sum of the results obtained from them. All in all, the musical letters of the name SiGriD wiESmAnn appear 60 times: it is a birthday serenade for the Austrian musicologist who tragically lost her life in a car accident shortly after her 60th birthday.