de imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione. II, für ensemble

Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600) dedicated a main part of his treatises to the study and composition of magic-mnemonic systems. His last work to be published during his lifetime, De Imaginum signorum et idearum compositione, represents the most elaborate instrument of the arts within Bruno's religion of the mind. It is a system of order based on space as the first expression of intellectual content; a space giving an essential role to the symbolic elements by which it is defined and in which the notions "place" and "matter" merge. Bruno transforms this space-matter entity into a rational object imbued with mind and intellect, into a space-system and into a principle of psychological and mental order. A place able to take in and develop all the innumerable nuances of vibrations of the sound and of the light produced by the friction between the experience and the outer edges of the soul's intimacy.

The structure of our work De Imaginum is based on Bruno's instructions for the elevation of the locus memoriae – place of remembrance – a unique eerie architecture created from and in emptiness. It is a "constellation" of mental (preliminary) fields which is gradually populated like a fake architectural machinery in a slow circular transfer by sound, moving in a space-system of complicated associative orders. Sounding architecture as theatre of imagination, sound as universal place and universal matter, as extensive substance and monstrous, infinite emptiness abounding with energy and dynamics. Architecture of listening which passes the writing as space-system lingering at each point in order not only to merge the sound generating elements (speed, direction and pressure of the bow; lip pressure or amount of air...) but also to blow this small universe up again into thousands of pieces. "Micro-tonality" not as expansive harmonic process but as development of sound quality into countless levels of intensity, weight and brightness. Our composition "De imaginum… compositione. II" is dedicated to Peter Paul Kainrath and the Klangforum.