Nicolaus Huber, "Parusie - Annaherung und Entfernung"

Huber was born on the 15th of December 1939 in Passau. He studied at the Musikhochschule in Munich from 1958 to 1962; he subsequently studied composition with F. X. Lehner und Giinter Bialas until 1967. In 1965 and 1966 he worked together with Josef Anton Riedl in the Electronic Studlio in Munich. From 1967 to 1968 he stayed in Venice in order to study compositon with Luigi Nono. In 1969 Huber was awarded a prize by the ci,ty of Munich; in 1971 he received a scholarship to study at he Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. During this time he was a member of Riedl's ensemble. From 1971 to 1974 Huber was Vice-President of the German section of the ISCM and was appointed Professor of composition at the Folkwangschule, Essen in 1974.

Parusie - Annaherung und Entfernung

"'Parusie' is a concept taken from Plato's philosophy and meaning the participation of the idea in things, i.e. we can recognize a chair as a chair, despite its dissimilarity from other chairs, because at some earlier time or mind visualized the idea of a chair and can recall this idea. The underlying idea of my piece 'Parusie' is a principle of motion: approaching vs. withdrawal."

Huber's definition can also be extended to theology, where 'nagovoia' means the reappearance or return of Christ, the notorious absence of which has been theology's eternal Gordian knot. Huber has elevated something quite unphilosophical - approaching vs. with dranal - to the level of a philosophical idea, to something fixed and immutable shining through the world of appearances. Strictly speaking, his idea is quite un-Platonic: in fact it is rather reminiscent of Heraclitus and his doctrine of eternal flux and the emanations of the primordial fire or "logos" to which all individual appearances eventually return. Admittedly Heracliltus, a confirmed atheist, described change as something immobile; but this immobility only receives meaning by virtue of the logos - reason - which manifests itself in eternal motion. A view of this sort has its snags: the fact that the logos governs the course of the world in all its contradictions - good and evil, peace and war - robs it of that very quality, rationality, which defines its status as the logos, making it instead blind and irrational. Nonetheless Huber is correct, in a metaphorical and strictly musical sense, to say that approaching and withdrawal form a principle. As he says: "The approach withdraw principle radiates its strength in all parameters. As reagards pitch, it produces compositional devices such as canon and heterophony, and performance techniques such as glissandos, trills and tremolos." The principle is most clearly evident in connection with loudness: forte sounds closer, more direct than piano or pianissimo. Even in regard to rhythm, approaching and withdrawal can be vividly represented by having rhythmic patterns suddenly coincide and then separate as rhythmic dissonance."

Fluctuation of this sort at the micro-level corresponds at the macro-level to the approach and withdrawal of quotations: "A full gamut of clarity in employed, from genuine quotation to mere analogy. Direct quotations can be easy or difficult to recognize; imitated compositional devices and performance techniques can function as quotations. Midway through the piece, bars 1-7 from Webern's op. 9 no. 5 appear. This most obvious (and only genuine) quotation is the key to the quotation level as a whole. The intervals in this bagatelle for string quartet gradually expand, and in this sense Webern's music and mine have the same principle of motion. However, their exposed position and electronic amplification in my work emphasize 'the alien quality, which only becomes comprehensible when the listener is aware of the level of quotation. There is an abundance of obscure quotations ranging from Robert Franz's 'Es hat die Rose sich beklagt' to individual notes such as the low Bb for contrabassoon from Webern's 'Orchesterstiicke' op. 6, or the timpani F from the Scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth. These isolated notes are, basically, no longer quotations and can only be understood as analogies."

A quotation technique reduced to the level of the timpani F from the Scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth seems absurd. Yet Huber has grasped a key point: the historical basis of musical material. Notes are not just conglomerations of dead matter to be moulded at will, but living cells bearing the imprint of history. It is more important to be reminded of this now then when "Parusie" was composed. -- Clytus Gottwald (Translation: J. Bradford Robinson)