Origins & Context

Aber im Vorhofe beziehet euren Lohn was recorded in May 2018, only three months after my first extended studio improvisation.

At that time, I still imagined these recordings as a kind of musical diary. My original idea had been to return to the studio regularly — perhaps every few months — and preserve whatever had developed during the intervening period.

This second recording ultimately taught me that the process did not work that way.

The months surrounding the recording were personally demanding. I was building my independent professional life while carrying substantial responsibilities at home and caring for my children. At the same time, my father's physical condition was deteriorating and increasingly required my attention.

Our relationship had been complicated for many years. By 2018, however, his circumstances had become precarious. He could no longer live independently and eventually moved into the Lindenhof care home in St. Gallen. I remain deeply grateful for the dignity and humanity with which the people there cared for him.

He died on 13 July 2018, two months after these preludes were recorded. Shortly before his death, I was called to the hospital during the night and was able to see him and say goodbye.

None of this was conceived as a programme for the music. The two preludes should therefore not be understood as a musical description of these events. They were created within the psychological landscape in which those events were taking place.

Looking back, the recording also marks an important artistic discovery. Three months had not given me the same internal distance that had preceded the first recording. I increasingly understood that these improvisations could not simply be produced according to a schedule. They required time — time for experience to accumulate, for impressions to settle, and for a genuine need to return to the piano to emerge.

The much longer intervals between later recordings were therefore not accidental. They became part of the creative process itself.

Aber im Vorhofe beziehet euren Lohn occupies a transitional position in what would only later become Ordo ab Chao: an early attempt to establish a regular musical diary that ultimately revealed why such a diary could not be regular.

The Title

The title Aber im Vorhofe beziehet euren Lohn was not present when the two preludes were recorded in May 2018. It came to me intuitively several months later, shortly before their release.

By then, the circumstances surrounding the recording had acquired an entirely different meaning.

My father died on 13 July 2018. Our relationship had been difficult for many years, and during the final months of his life caring for him had often been demanding. Yet when his health deteriorated, I became increasingly involved in arranging the practical circumstances of his life and ensuring that he was properly cared for.

Shortly before his death, I was able to visit him in hospital and say goodbye. We had intended to see each other once more on the following morning. He died before that meeting could take place.

When the doctor telephoned me that evening, I was alone at home. My children were abroad and there was nobody with me except my dog. I remember ending the call, sitting on the sofa and looking at him. He seemed to sense that something had happened.

I said to him: “My father has died.”

And then I cried.

The intensity of that grief surprised me. After everything that had happened between my father and me, I had never imagined that his death would affect me in this way.

On 14 September, we held his farewell ceremony on Lake Constance. He had explained to me beforehand how he wanted it to be arranged. We were a small group, travelling onto the lake in two motorboats accompanied by a pastor, and there we said goodbye to him.

Afterwards, I felt something that was more than grief. There was a profound sense of completion. Despite the difficulties of our relationship, I had been able to accompany my father through the final stage of his life and ultimately let him go in peace.

It was only after these events that the title of the recording emerged.

For me, Aber im Vorhofe beziehet euren Lohn came to express something deeply personal: that the reward at the end of a difficult passage need not be material. Sometimes the reward is reconciliation. Sometimes it is simply the knowledge that one has done what needed to be done.

In my case, the reward was peace.

Prelude I — Musical Analysis

Prelude I unfolds over approximately eight minutes as a free piano improvisation whose form is generated through contrast rather than through a predetermined classical structure. Its most striking characteristic is the alternation between passages of considerable harmonic and dynamic tension and quieter episodes in which the musical texture opens and the tonal direction becomes more transparent.

The opening establishes an unsettled harmonic environment. Rather than presenting a clearly defined theme followed by conventional development, the music appears to search for its material while it is being played. Harmonic density, chromatic colour and strongly articulated gestures give the first section a sense of instability and expectation.

As the improvisation progresses, more stable tonal regions begin to emerge. G becomes a particularly important point of reference, while C, D, E, F and A contribute to passages with a more diatonic character. These moments do not establish a single key for the entire work; instead, they function as temporary areas of orientation within a harmonic landscape that repeatedly becomes ambiguous again.

The large-scale dynamic architecture is particularly clear. After the comparatively forceful opening, the music retreats during the following minutes. Around the middle of the work, intensity rises markedly again: the texture becomes denser and the harmonic language darker and more chromatic. This central expansion forms one of the principal dramatic peaks of the prelude.

What follows is not a simple continuation of that climax. The music withdraws again. The final third becomes increasingly spacious and restrained, with more clearly recognisable tonal relationships returning after the preceding harmonic tension.

The ending is especially significant. Rather than concluding with the most powerful gesture of the improvisation, the music progressively relinquishes energy. The final minute is substantially quieter than the opening and middle sections. The prelude therefore ends not with a declaration but with a form of suspension and release.

A moderate underlying pulse can be perceived, but rhythm is not used as a rigid organising framework. The expressive movement is created primarily through changing density, articulation, harmonic tension and dynamic weight. This gives the improvisation the character of an evolving internal process rather than that of a composition organised around fixed thematic sections.

In this respect, Prelude I differs noticeably from Wohlauf Würdige Brüder, Schreitet Voran. Where the earlier improvisation ultimately accumulates energy and moves towards a strongly forward-directed conclusion, Prelude I follows a more cyclical trajectory: tension emerges, subsides, returns with greater force, and is finally allowed to dissolve.

Its musical argument therefore remains deliberately unresolved. As Prelude I of a two-part work, it does not need to provide a complete answer. Its significance may ultimately become clearest only in relation to Prelude II.

Prelude II — Musical Analysis

Prelude II unfolds over approximately eight minutes and twenty seconds. Although it belongs to the same work as Prelude I, it does not simply continue or repeat the musical trajectory of its predecessor. It establishes its own expressive space while retaining the improvisatory language that connects the two pieces.

The tonal landscape remains fluid, but the music repeatedly gravitates towards familiar diatonic centres. G is particularly prominent across much of the improvisation, while C, E, F, A and D form an important part of the surrounding harmonic field. Rather than remaining within a single clearly established key, the music moves through areas of greater and lesser tonal stability.

The first half of the prelude is comparatively active. Harmonic tension and release follow one another without settling into a conventional thematic form. The musical argument develops through changes in texture, register, articulation and harmonic density rather than through the exposition and development of a fixed theme.

Around the middle of the work, G acquires particular gravitational importance. The music repeatedly returns to this tonal region while continuing to explore neighbouring harmonic colours. This creates a sense of orientation without completely eliminating ambiguity.

A significant change occurs in the later part of the improvisation. From approximately the sixth minute onwards, C becomes increasingly prominent and the harmonic language acquires a more open, diatonic quality. After the greater instability of the preceding sections, this creates the impression of a gradual clarification.

Dynamically, the overall trajectory is also striking. The opening and central sections contain substantial activity and weight, but the final part progressively relinquishes energy. The last minute is considerably quieter, and the closing seconds become extremely restrained.

The ending therefore does not function as a triumphant culmination. Instead, the music seems to withdraw from its own argument. After more than eight minutes of harmonic movement and changing intensity, it arrives at a state closer to release than affirmation.

Rhythmically, Prelude II possesses a somewhat stronger underlying forward pulse than its companion. An approximate pulse around 110 beats per minute can be perceived, although — as in Prelude I — tempo alone does not determine the form. Changes in harmonic density and articulation remain the principal drivers of the musical narrative.

Taken on its own, Prelude II can therefore be heard as a movement from activity and harmonic searching towards increasing clarity and finally withdrawal. Its ending leaves space rather than filling it.