Pathos of Distance

First performance: 05 May 2017, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, JACK quartet

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festival's program

Pathos of Distance invites us into a world where distance is not emptiness, but a gesture of care. The title echoes a philosophical idea according to which respect begins with stepping back — with looking from afar, allowing space to exist. Composed in 2017, in a Europe marked by migration and the tensions it generated, the work weaves together ethical, ritual, and political dimensions by letting otherness resonate at the very core of the music.

This otherness takes shape in the Wald Teufel — a humble, “poor man’s” echo of the violin family, an archaic instrument bearing the trace of forgotten rites. Inserted into what might be called the Rolls-Royce of chamber music, the string quartet, it rattles, unsettles, and cracks open the huis clos of refinement. Its disruptive presence reshapes the quartet from within: the cello, detuned, grows dark and rapacious; the viola, subjected to the same preparation, becomes suddenly fragile. Familiar voices are bent, distorted, transformed — as if the quartet’s polished surface could no longer resist the intrusion.

Here, precision and chance collide. Resonances burst open, rhythms fracture, and sound itself slips into unpredictability. Out of this tension emerges a musical landscape in which distance is not absence but energy — where listening becomes an act of recognition.