From “Progethal Percussian for Advanced Beginners”

This piece derives from the translation of semantic and grammatic aspects of language into music, i.e. the meaning of words and sentence parsing in various selected texts formed the starting point for the instrumentation, rhythm and dynamics in the final score. The composition as presented here is a pseudo-pedagogic exercise using excerpts from a (growing) collection of texts in the language “Progethal Percussian”; the listeners fulfil the role of “advanced beginners”, the performers are the “readers”. The term “Progethal” (pronounced “pro-jee-thal”) points to others such as “project”, “work in progress”, “algorithmic programme”, even “proto-rhetoric oration” but last and not least to the legendary P. Roget (1779-1869), whose Thesaurus of 1852 was an indispensable source of inspiration and knowledge in this work.

Audio performer, Köln Schlagquartett