How is it that this orchestra piece, Quintet for Groups, composed in the 1960’s, should in 2008 seem relevant to the world as we experience it now? While in Germany for its rediscovery by the festival orchestra in Donaueshingen I talked to a number of people about this. My purpose in raising this issue now is not to seize the lead in this discussion. It is to ask, on a deep and personal level why this relevance should happen at this time.
There is, first of all, a parallel between the present conflict in the Near East and the phase the war in Vietnam had reached by the mid-’60’s. Both represent a push toward integration of very unlike cultures widely perceived as aggression and colonialism. I believe that both interpretations have had then and now a degree of accuracy, which accounts for the extreme degree of upset in world relations. Many people whose views are poles apart are having to face a depth of hostility so conflicting that it threatens chaos. There is no escaping the complex interconnectedness even between sworn enemies.
To counter this downward spiral new conceptions of order and clarity of relationships are of prime importance. This was the way I saw the world in the mid-’60’s and again, more than ever now. Order concepts of exactly this kind are what the microtonal just tuning of Quintet for Groups symbolizes. It is the way in which I have endeavored to clarify my own life and it is the fundamental concept in my way of organizing sounds in a piece of music.