Drei kleine Zwölftonübungen (1983)

Burkhard Mohr (b. 1955) — Drei kleine Zwölftonübungen (1983) for organ

0:00 | 1. Praeludium
1:35 | 2. Intermezzo
2:39 | 3. Postludium

“Drei kleine Zwölftonübungen” (1983), "Three Little Twelve-Tone Exercises", was written during a holiday in the Pfronten region of lower Bavaria and was inspired by the organs that the composer encountered there. Following the darkly brooding “Pastorale brevis” of 1982, this piece is an important further early exploration of Mohr’s personal integration of 12-tone and tonal material. The mood here is lighter, and the 12-tone material is developed almost entirely triadically.

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.