three questions - one answer

• Price: 32.18 USD

• Instrument: Violin
• Sub Category: Violin & Keyboard
• Composer: Ruegg, Mathias
• Publisher Code: 33 205
• Product #: RUEGG003

for violin and piano

Perhaps you know the three essential philosophic questions: where do we come from, who are we, and what do we get for dessert? The answers are still unknown. If you should ask, however, how do I play the first, second and third questions of this piece, then I would in fact know some answers. The first movement consists of a 16-bar harmonic cycle based upon four harmonies: Ab7, Gj alt, E7, Eb7. These are symmetrical to each other, the corresponding substitutes being also used in this piece (e.g. Ab7/D7, or E7/Bb7). The intensity increases because of the tempo, from eighths to triplets to sixteenths, but the fundamental beat always remains the same, even in 6/8!!! The second question is somewhat freer, but is frequently interrupted by rhythmical sections, always in the same tempo. The most important question, the one asking for dessert, is posed at an extremely high speed, odd rhythms making frequent appearances; their wound paths giving the search for Truth probably a better chance. The trio section, too, refers to the fundamental beat. At the very end, when one believes to have solved the third question (thus ending with the dessert, the Viennese Kaiserschmarrn) an unexpected turnaround surprises us, i.e. an eight-bar form with rhythm changes invented by George Gershwin in I Got Rhythm and which had become the fundament of all jazz harmony: I-VI-II-V-I. So it's probably not Kaiserschmarrn after all, but brownies? But you surely know who you are and where you come from? So there...For my part, my name is mathias, I come from my mom and have written this piece in November, 2009.

mathias ruegg - Vienna, January 2011