Echtzeit
 
    musik (e: Realtime music)... somehow I have never really liked this term, having found the sound of the
    german word from the beginning, amongst other things, too unsensual. I think that this is important
    though since music has a lot to do with sensuality and sensibility. And the 'real-time': does it exist? Is
    'time', that which we presume is ours, is it 'real'? And could I then be defining my work proudly, in some
    ways elevated from the 'wrong' time, as an exponent of a real 'time-music', a 'real-time-music', a music,
    that resides real(ly) in the time -- perhaps this is what actually not so many people have noticed yet, since
    all of us are not very well known in the 'normal' mainstream, newspaper, theater and television reality
    (should that be the 'real' reality??) These are some of my thoughts about the title of this book. Actually I
    seldom write with words but rather am involved in research of the non-verbal, of music, regardless in
    which time it may sound - mostly I try to stop the time in my pieces.

    'Party-killer Music'. When I meet non-specialists who would like to know which direction of music I am
    working with, and who aren't familiar with the music style that I play -- most of the time, they are none
    the wiser after my explanations -- then I often politely answer, deliberately to wipe away immediately all
    possible expectations of 'music': 'Party-killer Music'. Miraculously however, they often pose the
    questions, where one might hear this music, and if there were any CDs existing of it. It's not totally
    unproblematic though, to simply hear this music on CD, alone and unprepared - it has unfortunately
    already happened a couple of times that I have scared a curious person I have met in conversation by
    letting them experience the music on CD first, and that these people have disappeared forever; perhaps
    this happened because of the relative inertia of time, that has slipped by in their apartments, or it may also
    be due to the uncommon, impenetrable abstracted components, the rhythmically free ordered noise and
    sounds -- one can easily scare listeners with many CDs of 'Contemporary Music' (that which has been
    created somewhere since the early 1920's) when their listening habits sit in a functional-harmonic, stable,
    clearly rhythmically structured zone; regardless, in which way that music was made, in an improvisedcomposed,
    constructed-composed, constructed-improvised, intuitively improvised or composed way...

    For the moment I find that many CDs are perhaps more like 'cans of music', that enable musicians and a
    few, mostly very well-informed listeners to understand them. I have noticed however that it is also
    possible for others to hear, enjoy and get to know 'realtime' music in a real concert situation or a
    technically very well prepared concert for loudspeakers.

    My approach to music is, among other things, inspired by Baroque polyphony, it is compositionally
    improvised, constructed and improvisationally composed, composed, improvised, improvisationally
    composed, conceptual, or freely formal, depending upon the particular project.
    At best inside the subjectively sensed, respective time, within a frozen moment.
    Allowing an invisible four dimensional sculpture to arise, that would be of course an ideal never to be
    achieved.

    I don't think that it is particularly sensible as a musician to write analytically about one's own work. I also
    think that it is not so important in which way music is made but rather if it sounds, engages, moves,
    whether a new, individual point of view, way of listening is being offered. Even though the public, as
    well as concert promoters and music licensing companies, judge the quality of music often exclusively
    regarding the way (they already know) in which it was created, it is perhaps sensible, to demonstrate and
    to describe here these other possible approaches to music, which are situated outside of the well defined,
    explored, known and accepted compositorial techniques. And to do this, even if it means using the term
    „Echtzeitmusik“, and with full knowledge of the risk of creating a new pigeon-hole in which one sits
    cozily.