Drei kleine Orgelpunkte (2003)

Burkhard Mohr (b. 1955) — Drei kleine Orgelpunkte (2003) for organ

1) Orgelpunkt mit Kreisen darüber
2) Orgelpunkt mit allerlei darüber

3) Orgelpunkt wechselnd, tranquillo

“Drei kleine Orgelpunkte” (2003), “Three Little Pedal Points” consists of three brief movements, each built around “pedal points” (a sustained note in the bass—in German, literally “Orgelpunkt,” organ point). In the first, “Pedal point with circles above,” the graphical circles of the score are articulated as gestural clusters. The title of the second is self-explanatory: “Pedal point with all sorts of things above it,” In the third, “Alternating pedal point, tranquil,” the bass note gradually moves while the music unfolds above it.

German composer Burkhard Mohr (b. 1955) was born in Gambach/Oberhessen and was educated in Frankfurt where he studied music and theology. He also attended the Darmstadt new music courses with Stockhausen, Kagel, Ligeti, and Xenakis. He has worked as a church musician in Frankfurt-Höchst and Wiesbaden and also taught music for many years at the technical university in Frankfurt. Mohr has composed numerous musical works in many genres, including several operas and orchestral works along with much chamber music and music for choir and organ. Mohr’s music usually concerns itself with the blurry boundaries and connections between atonal (12-tone) and tonal (triadic) materials and with the unexpected (or traditionally extended) formal designs that can result from teasing out these connections.