Hubler - Arie Dissolute Sonetto Lxxxiii

Klaus K. Hübler's list of works is short. His oeuvre, abruptly interrupted because of illness in 1989, comprises just 24 scores. But this only seems to be a small number of works. They show a composer who found his own language very early and went on thinking, whose compositional development progressed at times so quickly and so purposefully that, when one compares the earlier with the later scores, it hardly seems possible that they were written by the same composer. The first phase is characterised on the one hand by soft plains of sound developing slowly, counterpointed by quietly circling, ostinato-like motifs. On the other hand an espressivo, sometimes evocative of Alban Berg, sometimes vehement, runs through the scores of this period; an espressivo which develops more and more from a "simple" style to a structural type precisely defined in instrumental-technical terms. This espressivo also seems to be the crucial point in the transition of the works of the second phase (since 1981). The technically exact definition of what the player should do changes in respect of what the player really does: The way the instruments are played becomes the aesthetic and analytical starting-point of Hübler's composing. In such a way compositions come into being in the second phase which are written "for the instrument" in a completely new way, even if the difficulties of performance - after all, everything is difficult which is not familiar - suggest the opposite to many players the first time they are confronted with the score.