I usually carry musical ideas around with me for a long time before transforming them into “pieces”. Of course, this means there is a risk that they may become stale, lose their spontaneity or that routine may take over. That is why, over the past years, I have appreciated the sounds that have fallen straight into me or perhaps fallen out of me – as in a dream or a dream-like state: a sound that never ends, that favours high tones which I can no longer hear as I could in my younger days. Behind this lies perhaps the old human longing to conquer time, for eternal life, although our music’s dependence on the unrelenting passage of time always means that the pieces themselves become a mere fragment – a “Bruchstück”.

The title itself says a lot. The dynamics of the piece very rarely go beyond pianissimo. The elements of movement are much reduced. It is like in a dream: one tries to move forward; but it is impossible. The music feels its way as if blind. The piece is an epitome – the highest praise of slowness, a strange foreign element in our hectic world with time and again the ticking sound of time passing, at various speeds. Transience – even in dreams.

Friedrich Cerha