Seeking a balance between sensuality and reflection

The piano piece 'Natur-Spuren' is more than a musical snapshot of personal experiences of nature; the title is both a programme and a message.

One cannot compose without presuppositions, because the inherited messages on the musical map are traces that have to be transformed into a personal, contemporary musical language. The sensually reflective examination of nature - as a source of inspiration and basic attitude - opens up an innovative, experimental approach with a wide range of creative possibilities:

Discovering traces in nature means sharpening our perception for new forms and structures, time and space, eavesdropping on tonally unbound sounds and uncovering hidden processes. This diversity to be traced in nature must be discovered and creatively developed for composition processes.

For me, composing as a formative development process means approaching and searching for discrete forms and unfamiliar sounds, creating new sound and spatial designs (e.g. for choral works) and uncovering the undiscovered - in the sense of a balance between sensuality and reflection.

The working process is always a search into the open. Accordingly, each work requires its own individualised formal form with its own tonal language and specific meaningfulness. Thus, many of my works have open forms such as miniatures (for piano), fantasies (for organ), sound pieces (for choir), studies (Wohin? for piano), character pieces (for flute) or moments (Risse im Eis for piano).

Hans-Michael Rummler was born in Herrenberg/Böblingen in 1946, studied piano, clarinet and composition in Cologne and then switched to musicology, philosophy and sociology from Cologne via Berlin and Bielefeld to Bremen. After gaining his Diplom and doctorate, he taught aesthetics and cultural studies at the University of Hanover and the University of the Arts Bremen. After a few more years, musically in an orientation period, he took up composition studies again in 2000 with the American composer John Van Buren (Stuttgart). He lives and works as a freelance composer in the district of Günzburg.

His compositions are a journey into the unknown, where there is always something new to discover, in silence, in nature, in the abstinence of rules. For him, composing is creative, creative reasoning beyond language, thinking beyond the musical material and forms, about the appropriateness and meaningfulness of musical and non-musical content - a reflexive practice on the edge of musical logic, aware of his own inadequacy. In his studious, undogmatic compositional style, he endeavours in each work to musically shape the balancing act between past and present challenges, the path to the open.

His compositions focus on works for piano, organ, flute and choir.