Herzbahn: Literature as »a road to heaven«, at any rate on earth; although the music - already in Becketts radio play Words And Music not only has the final say but is there first and will remain, will survive us? - as the sound of the spheres, as a symphony of nature which evenminded takes the minutes of the seepage of human kind? And perhaps it can spin forth, in these short pieces of prose, the adumbration of thoughtlessness - something like weight­lessness? -, the spur of the moment and finally become a thought, not too deep for tears but for the thinking itself.*

There was a protracted wrestling with the titles. Some of the pieces like Zwerge - ganz gross (Dwarfs - really huge) or Kammer­spiel (Chamber Play) are a little bit long in the tooth, they´ve had titles already, others like Herzbahn (Heart Track) and Winter­märchen (Winter Tale) are new. So there was the question whether literature purports to give the titles or if the music is happy alone and remains so independent, that titles are summed up in the music itself.
The fact that, especially in the case of Charms the prose has no title, pointed in the direction of opting for music titles. But what tipped the scales was the thought that here, in this special case of rap­proche­ment between words and music, the music remains so dominant that the title should grow out of it also. For the music doesn´t serve the text but instead refuses any mimicry a priori. This is already evident in the outwardness that the texts alone take only little space and time. One could therefore almost state that conversly the texts enrich the music, direct it in one or several directions. Nevertheless it is about an unassertive attempt to leave the music free, even if it enters a functional context, where normally the eter­nal ornament comes to the fore.
At least I never thought of a musical realization of literal texts. Instead I trust in a subcutaneous affinity between these two worlds - maybe not perceptible until the second listening -, of the literal and the musical imagination so that in happy moments you can´t distinguish who influenced whom and who is dominated by whom and that it is also completely irrelevant to want this question answered. Unless the language including its described situation as an image is as powerful as in Kafkas case so that the music is naturally caught in its current and remains in the backwash.
But also as a whole the word - so singular and spa­ciously dispersed - should appear like a pearl. I long to evoke this impression through the »connecting« pieces. Thereby Unforeknown, a homage to the re­cently deceased Michael Hamburger and particularly his conception of a diary of non-events, approximates my idea of meditation music whereby meditation can be thoroughly understood in the sense of Miraculous power, marvellous activity: drawing water, chopping wood.**

*Georg Steiner: Ten (Possible) Reasons for the Sadness of Thought

**Chinese Zen master P´ang

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