Kranz

(2005)
Program note
Organic form itself is found, mathematically speaking, to be a function of time. We might call the form of an organism an event in space-time, and not merely a configuration in space. (Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Aristid Lindenmayer: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants)

Art is all about form. Forms are represented everywhere – in space, on earth, in nature, in society. One has to be able to read and to understand those forms in order to create something new. In my music I like to use ‘found mathematical objects’: simple automatons which build forms over time.

When I encountered Aristid Lindenmayer’s ‘L-systems’ some time ago, I became fascinated with these rules to describe plant forms and growth. The organic development and the self-similarity of the plant forms seemed to be perfectly translatable to music.

That’s how the idea for Kranz was born: a work that uses a simple Lindenmayer axiom, of which I translated the first five recursions (a slowly growing repetitive structure) to a score for piano and string quintet in five parts.

Kranz is dedicated to my dear friend and colleague Willem Boogman.
Audio
Score sample
Stacks Image 9341
Stacks Image 92
Scoring
Piano
2 Violins
Viola
2 Violoncellos
Duration
11'
More info
Commissioned by Festival Open Systems, Bochum
First performance
November 17, 2005, Bochum (Germany), by Luxembourg Sinfonietta & Marcel Wengler (conductor).
Sheet music
Available for rent/purchase from Deuss Music.