Fritsch wrote the triptych “Damals” in 1992; it consists of three compositions. “Das bittersüsse Büchlein”, for the unusual combination of oboe, accordion and double bass, refers in its title to the story of the bittersweet little book in the Book of Revelation and introduces the motif of death in a singular sound world of harmonics and high notes. It is played by the Trio Akkobasso with Amy K. Goeser, Heike Storm and Eberhard Maldfeld.
“Damals” for speaker (tape) and organ is based on Samuel Beckett’s play of the same name, which revolves around a dying self’s memories of different stages of life and identities. As Beckett specified, the speaker’s voice is heard in three versions, placed left, centre and right in the stereo image. Fritsch links the text syllable by syllable with particular pitches, which the organ plays in synchrony with the words; the music is subordinate to the text. The speaker is Dieter Wernecke, the organist Bernhard Haas. The booklet prints Beckett’s text in Elmar Tophoven’s German translation.
The “Trio vom Ende” for baritone, alto flute and percussion is set to excerpts from “Damals”; its melody largely follows the calm melody of speech. Here the music becomes an equal partner of the text, in “an attempt”, as Fritsch put it, “to feel, through words and sounds, the peaceful quiet of the end”. Stephen Grant sings, with Camilla Hoitenga and Jonny Axelsson. The triptych represents an important facet of Fritsch’s late work from the 1990s onwards: the reduction of material to the essential.
Fritsch, born in Bensheim-Auerbach in 1941, was a member of the Stockhausen ensemble from 1964 to 1970, founded the Feedback Studio in Cologne with Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson in 1970 and, with Gehlhaar, the Feedback Studio Verlag in 1971, the first composer-run publisher in Germany; from 1984 to 2006 he taught composition at the Cologne Musikhochschule. The recording was made at the premiere in 1992 at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne; Fritsch chose the works together with the Feedback Studio Verlag. The “Trio vom Ende” brings to a close the series of Feedback CDs, whose last volumes appeared after Fritsch’s death; whether it marks an “end” or a “transition”, the booklet leaves open – Fritsch understood Beckett’s text as a “transitional text”. Studio and publishing house understood themselves not as a commercial enterprise but as an artists’ cooperative and an alternative centre for music; the publisher represented up to 300 compositions by 20 composers, and the 46 issues of the Feedback Papers series offer a view of their own on the history of new music away from the established festivals. After Fritsch’s death in 2010 the publishing house was dissolved.