Con moto, poco rubato, dolce, leggiero, lontano – these terms at the beginning of the score occur repeatedly in almost all my compositions, not only in those many smaller pieces (for various ensembles, mostly collected into cycles) I have been composing in the past ten years. One could call these years my “Period of Bagatelles.” Here, however, the small genres (fr. bagatelles = harmless trifle) are not simply mere musical irrelevancies, but sublime trivialities; they represent a whole philosophy, a way of thinking.

The short form makes it possible to capture the moment as it is and make it linger on (Ah, linger on, thou art so fair! after Goethe), without imposing the burden of what is termed thematic elaboration. In other words – the development of a moment musical is not the most important aspect of the music, nor even is its timbre, but rather the clarity and distinctiveness of the melody and the possibility to recognize it, to recall and to repeat it. In this way, the outwardly weak text is to be rendered and articulated in a special way: namely, the usually supportive means such as agogics, tempo, dynamics, and pedal use are now being brought more to the fore. What I am trying to do is to transform the musical style of bygone times, i.e. simple elements of the musical texture (such as triple meter, sequences, triads) by giving it a multi-dimensional, metaphorical meaning, and, despite any “neo”-connotations, a sense of modernity. Born out of silence and dissolving into silence, my music may leave a strangely rare reverberation in the interpreters’ and listeners’ awareness.