scored for viola and piano

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duration 16 minutes 

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What makes the past into history? Events that form the social stream make it into the history books. They are usually so-called objective facts, causes and their consequences that are only interpreted in this way by the distance of time, in retrospect. We try to seize the momentum by writing it down, without print the past only exists from our memory. Our memory is unreliable and incomplete, because the same event can be remembered in completely different ways by those who experienced it. The past can be deliberately distorted, to cover something up, to put something right or to strive for a certain vision of the future. Shared memories are however the basis for friendships and loves, it is our past that generates our identity. They feel like truths and can come from the personal sphere, they are the small histories of everyday life. But they can also be made-up truths, constructed from the conviction that they will make the future better.

Both visions are coins with reverse sides. For the first part …circling into oblivion… I took the beauty of the fading of an event in time as a starting point. It is a circular process in which time passes and less and less remains of the core of the initial event, its beauty lies in the melancholic process of its erasure. In the second part History of Ideology the blind conviction of ideology is central, whatever it may be. Ideologies are powerful and heroic, forward thinking and can move crowds. Despite the joy they generate when they are created, their ecstatic nature has proven that they usually end in suffering and pain.

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…circling into oblivion…

History of Ideology

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Chronicles is dedicated to Mathis Rochat and was recorded at Concertgebouw Brugge in March 2024.