A woodland stream, a word from Joyce, ships' horns in Beirut harbour, architectural sketches: the composer Oliver Schneller frequently proceeds from extra-musical patterns, models, and objects trouves in his search for ‘the song present in all things’. Yet he is equally far removed from Messiaen's birdsong and Cage's start charts. His music is neither a "personal confession," nor does he want to extirpate the auteur. Instead, as in Aqua Vit, he subjects the babblings of a woodland stream to spectral analysis and transforms it into a fully autonomous score. Schneller, who studied with Tristan Murail among others, strikes a balance with the dynamics inherent in the material itself.
