For a long time, among post-war composers, composing for organ seemed to be discredited, particularly in Germany, but not so much in France, as was exemplified above all by Olivier Messiaen, who revived the French organ tradition after the fin de siècle and at the same time continued it. As an innovator, he freed church music, especially organ music, from the spirit of the Restoration. The conditions for this seemed to be more favourable in France than in Germany, where the self-image of faith and religion is very rational and thus very secular. It follows a natural-philosophical-Cartesian approach, committed to the thinking of the Enlightenment, deeply skeptical of mythologically transfigured excesses and religious-ideological sediments. In Germany, many serious composers with an awareness of history saw the church as an ideological space and with it the organ, both discredited not least by their tainted role in National Socialism, the latter via the youth and singing movement. It was György Ligeti who never cared about conventions, even those burdened by history, but sometimes simply swept them away by means of semantic reinterpretations (musica reservata), who first understood the church space as a creative art space and discovered with his epochal organ work Volumes the organ as a rich terrain for musical innovations, thus initiating a renaissance of organ music in Germany in the late 1960s (Bremen 1968: pro musica nova).
My intensive involvement with the organ follows a strong autobiographical component. Even as a small boy of five, listening to Olivier Messiaen's music was to prove to be a very formative moment for my later life. During a very difficult and disruptive childhood and adolescence, I was prevented from learning to play the organ. After such a life of disorientation as a young man who sought guidance in his faith, the profession of church musician seemed to give me spiritual support. The realization that I could not pursue this profession plunged me into a serious crisis. A way out of this crisis seemed to be composing for the organ. I owe my extensive organ oeuvre to this circumstance. And in many respects, my aesthetic thinking was formed from this, based on a rational, enlightened attitude (see above). In this sense, my evening-long organ cycle superverso a theosophical program, committed to that theosophical world cosmos which also Olivier
Messiaen's organ works are based on the triad of world existence as the course of the world in its continuously evolving transformation. The great role model Messiaen was therefore a special inspiration for this cycle.
This Cartesian-natural philosophical approach is rational in its secular objectification, spiritual in its strong belief in the divine reason for being, which Baruch de Spinoza once
»Substance«. This spirituality feeds the secular-rational approach of religion that has always had a strong influence on the intellectual and cultural history of France. In its ontological discursiveness it is also Jewish. Spinoza's »substance« as something that exists is intangible to the human mind, to its senses, in its all-encompassing infinity. This substance appears as the cause, as the original basis of everything that exists, such as the human being as an individual. It is divine, the creator of all natural existence. The constituents of natural being come together in their diversity (wholeness) in the triad of the relation of all individual things to the whole of movement and further of change as a processual design principle. From this derives the trinity of body, soul and spirit as a discursive level of individual being. For each human individual this gives birth to the corresponding unique »divine plan«.
My approach to the organ is similar to that of Olivier Messiaen, both technically and with a strong emotional impact. The technical approach is based on an analysis of the rich palette of tones of this wonderful instrument and a completely unconsciously developed and very personal hermeneutics of colors (colors of light, for example: "sharp, glaring" in the 1' register = the eternal light that brightly shines over everything, including the apocalyptic findings that keep peeking out), which are reflected compositionally in the form of specific register combinations. As with Messiaen, specific melody, chord and structural configurations also represent corresponding semantic references.
My composing has also developed through the fortunate encounter with some pioneers who are leading the way for the renaissance of the organ in new music: Reimund Böhmig, Hans-Ola Ericsson, Christoph Maria Moosmann and Zsigmond Szathmáry, who have interpreted my works in an outstanding manner and still do so. This CD presents some of the organ works that Reimund Böhmig, the magician of timbres among organists, also partially interprets on small organs, which is nothing short of a miracle given the sometimes orchestral style of these pieces.