I stood lost in the corner of a square near a Berlin S-Bahn underpass. Autumn had arrived; you could already smell the cold in the air, though it was bright and sunny. The past few days had been bleak, filled with an overwhelming sense of unease. But on this particular day, something had shifted, and while riding the S-Bahn, I found myself engrossed in an interview with Siri Hustvedt in Die Zeit. She was reflecting on her late husband, Paul Auster – the time they shared, their literary work, their relationship. When I got off the train, I still hadn’t finished reading and was too absorbed to stop. I carried the interview with me until I reached the square, where the sentence struck me: “Let’s remember this when the time comes.”
It was strange. Often, sentences and aphorisms spark something in me, inspiring me to compose again, to weave together loose musical threads and give them a tangible form through notation.
This sentence triggered something inside me – hope, concern, or perhaps even shame. Or maybe it was just the accordion, which I became aware of at the same time as the sentence, “Let’s remember this when the time comes.” The two merged, and I thought about how I really wanted to start composing music again. Perhaps the initial attempts would be exhausting and unsatisfying, but the sense of anticipation that grew within me brought a kind of calm. Perhaps the accordion was a catalyst for this sentence. What was I supposed to remember when the time came, and with whom?
I wasn’t in a relationship, and Hustvedt’s words revealed a quiet longing, one that seemed worth translating into music. Perhaps it was time to confront a full orchestral composition again, using the melting sound of an accordion to symbolically channel this longing.
The melody that played wasn’t familiar to me, but I liked the longing it expressed. I began to imagine orchestral movements and layers that could explore this longing. So, I asked the man with the accordion what he was playing. He looked as though life had worn him down, battered and lonely – a feeling I knew well. As I reflected on it in writing, I associated him with the colour blue: his skin leathery from the sun, lined with age. He only spoke Romanian, and I was unable to ask him about the tune. It could have been anything – a tango, a chanson, a folk song, or a ballad. But in my hearing, mixed with the interview I’d been reading, everything merged into an associative space that culminated in that sentence: “Let’s remember this when the time comes.”
When is the right time to remember, and with whom do I form this “we”? Questions about life choices, the search for meaning, exhaustion, and insignificance rose to the surface – questions that perhaps demanded musical expression. But how could I bring all of this to life through sound? How could I notate it, so that it formed a sensual whole? Rhythm and phrasing are one thing, of course, but is it still relevant to try to speak through orchestral music? Or am I merely succumbing to the indulgence of kitsch and the illusion of producing something truly original? These were the questions that surfaced as I dared to begin putting music into notation again. There wouldn’t be any explicit programme behind it, apart from that one sentence: “Let’s remember this when the time comes.”
