scored for violin and piano

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duration 13 minutes 

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From the Book of Restlessness, Sorrow and Delight is a work in a single, uninterrupted movement that unfolds according to a literary logic. Its musical structure behaves like that of a novel: not as a sequence of events, but as a composition of thoughts, motifs, and perspectives. Writing a novel is an art form in its own right (as we know from the essays of Milan Kundera) and it is precisely this novelistic way of thinking that forms the point of departure here.

 

As in Kundera’s work, an existential philosophy is not articulated through abstract ideas, but revealed through the everyday. The music observes relationships, the ways in which characters relate to one another. Even a small musical gesture can function as a recurring motif, carrying meaning and helping to shape the overall structure.

 

The music moves freely from idea to idea. There is no need for a causal sequence. As with Kundera, coherence does not arise from plot, but from ideas. His novels make use of musical forms; in From the Book of Restlessness, Sorrow and Delight, this principle is reversed: the music is guided by literary structures. What emerges is a sound world in which restlessness, sorrow, and delight coexist, bound together by recurring motifs that sometimes anticipate what is yet to come, and at other times recall what has already passed.

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'Music for Violin' is dedicated to Jiska Lambrecht and Marco Sanno. It was first performed during the Arte-Amanti Festival on March 26, 2021.