Jürg Frey

---

piano music 1978 - 2001
Order Reference:	EWR 0201
Medium:	CD
Composer:	Jürg Frey
Performer:	John McAlpine
"When I see that blank sheet in front of me, as empty as it may look, I have, of course, projected a great many things onto it already: music I've written or pieces that already exist. So I don't regard the sheet as blank. On the contrary: part of my work is to clear the slate, to eliminate what's there before I write even the first note. Then I can proceed to get what may be my own music down on the page."
"A typical strategy is waiting. A sequence of notes is most composers' starting point. And it's where I stop. Not that I cease to do anything at all; sometimes it takes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. There are so many traps, so many ways of destroying the sequence, because people think it needs a little compositional help."
"Sometimes you think – and I know this from reactions to my pieces - that a new element has emerged at just the right moment. When I work, I can predict the length of the various sections, that they're going to be seven, five and seven minutes long. But that's more the result of personal experience than of good timing. More important is the relation of the material to elapsing time. Some material can take up only so much time before it runs itself to death. With the sounds I use, the nature of the material may produce a certain quietude - with respect to how long a section can afford to be or when something new needs to be introduced. That's why the question of material is such a preoccupation.
If I don't have the right material, that feeling of quietude doesn't set in, and the impression arises of something being too long. Where this happens, there are two possibilities: either to cut somewhere or to restore that quiet acceptance of the durations. That is how I think about the question. It's not a matter of planning out durations but of sounding out the material, of exploring its nature. Sometimes it's virtually vacant - there's a very fine line between the vacant and the banal. I like that vacant quality if it avoids banality."
"When I see that blank sheet in front of me, as empty as it may look, I have, of course, projected a great many things onto it already: music I've written or pieces that already exist. So I don't regard the sheet as blank. On the contrary: part of my work is to clear the slate, to eliminate what's there before I write even the first note. Then I can proceed to get what may be my own music down on the page."
Jürg Frey