state of surfeit (2014)

line-up: flute (also piccolo), clarinet (clarinet in e-flat, clarinet in b-flat, bass clarinet), trumpet, accordion, violin, viola, contrabass, electronic and video
duration: 15′
date of premiere: 21.5.2014, Mayerhold Theater, Moscow, Russia

composed for Studio for New Music Moscow and the project ERWARTUNG (EXPECTATION) together with the Austrian Embassy in Moscow

video by Emmanuel Flores Elias

The daily barrage of images of catastrophes, disasters, commercial-kitsch, talkshows, porn and reality-TV-trash floods our living rooms and leaves us behind with a feeling of decadent pointlessness and colourful dullness. The entertainment industry offers us the satisfaction of our longing for the big crash, for the fall and the destruction, which was already in the second decade of the twentieth century a fundament of society’s sick war euphoria, an expectation of big changes, the hope for a catharsis and a restart.
Similar to this attitude the composition deals with the central chord of Schönberg’s Erwartung, the chord that marks the catastrophe, the discovering of the corps. The amount of appearance of the chord is exaggerated to the limit throughout the whole piece, the catastrophe increased to a permanent hype, liberated from its primary meaning to a steady self-contented state of decadence.