Masse und Bewegung is a series begun in 2018 that now comprises  eight compositions (MuB0-7) for various ensemble and orchestral configurations, exploring processes of condensation, accumulation, and disintegration. The title is taken from a book by  the philosopher Christian Unverzagt, who plays with the ambiguity of the conceptual pair between physics and sociology. I am  interested in extending this ambiguity to the definition and shaping of further “abstract” processes in music, without losing sight  of which concrete processes in the “real,” political, and social  world correlate with them or may be reflected in them.

While the first four pieces each focus on a sound body as a heterogeneous, polyphonic, yet self-contained “organism,” the subsequent works feature different groups that sometimes operate largely independently of one another, and through their friction and  shifts against one another, layered textures emerge and then break  apart again. Classical musical forms serve as a template here: In  MuB4, two soloists—using a grill grate, a glass pane, and a liquor  bottle—are juxtaposed with an accompanying ensemble playing  everyday objects and materials in the spirit of a “double concerto”;  in MuB5, four orchestral groups play together as if in a quartet of  four “meta-instruments”; and MuB6 is a kind of “concerto grosso”  for a solo group consisting of organ, double bass, and percussion/ sound objects, as well as two identical ensemble groups that play  a strict canon together. Finally, MuB7 seeks out sharp contrasts,  soft transitions, boundaries, and intersections: the instruments of  the ensemble play their solos here in parallel and largely independently, while a trio of three organs spans the space widely, and  a synthesizer, acting as a bridge between the two—the individual  and the integral—drives toward ever more intense movements of  fusion and climax, in which the entire cycle culminates.