Paweł (Sołtys) wrote the text in the structure of a Greek tragedy. With fixed parts such as epeisodion, stasimon, and parodos, on a micro scale. There are characters, there is a chorus. There is a micro-drama and perhaps there is catharsis. As I mentioned, at the center are bells. Thousands of bells thrown into the mud after the great war. Their hearts do not beat, yet something nevertheless happens.

Wherever one asks, in Europe and beyond, the bell is a powerful symbol of crossing a threshold. Of going beyond, of entering inward, of departure, of stopping. Of an end and a beginning. As if a sharp attack, tonally unclear, reddish spectrum and a long decay with a transition into silence that is hard to grasp meant precisely that, regardless of place and time.

I will not yet say what the exact ensemble will be. But I will say that something compels me to split the score for the string into individual instruments—to penetrate each one separately, to set single parameters of the spectrum.

So I am writing. But more often than usual I stop and listen. It is astonishing what one can hear. I had almost forgotten that writing is a function of listening. That one may write, but one must listen. Fortunately, I have remembered.