Sounds, not pitches, are the crux of Widmann’s musical philosophy, and he takes them to extremes. The musicians are often made to play in “as high as possible” or “as low as possible.” Not only are contrasts carried to a maximum, the timbral material is expanded into previously uncharted terrain. The astonishing thing is not so much the refinement of Widmann’s timbral spectrum, its added noise-like effects, as the fact that he stretches both ends of the acoustical scale. We hear, with increasingly frequency, not only garish non-periodic eruptions of grating color, but gentle, periodic pastels of tertian harmonies. Widmann, however, makes new qualities audible within them.
