Friedrich Jaecker was born in Soest in 1950, studied in Detmold and in Hamburg with György Ligeti and was appointed professor at the Cologne Musikhochschule in 1980. As a composer he began in a constructivist vein, for instance with “Beschreibung eines Zerfalls” for orchestra and “in excelsis” for three keyboard instruments and three percussionists (both 1976). After an excursion into trash with the chamber opera “Dir, immer nur Dir…” (1977–80), observing the process of composition became central for him. Since then he has used his means extremely sparingly: sounds or single notes surrounded by pauses are so enriched with relationships that the impression is less one of dissolution than of intensification.
The titles of most of his compositions since 1990 consist only of the scoring. Six of them can be heard here: “String orchestra” and “Percussion, Piano” of 1995, “Saxophone, Ensemble (Violin, Saxophone, Cello, Piano)”, “Double bass, Ensemble (Violin, Viola, Cello, Double bass, Harp)” and “Soprano, Ensemble (Soprano, Alto flute, Cello, Percussion, Piano)” from 1996 to 1997, and the “Trio (Violin, Viola, Cello)” of 1998. They do not form a closed group of works. “Composing means practising. Practice never comes to an end; the compositions are stations on this path,” runs Jaecker’s credo. In the booklet Stefan Fricke describes the pieces as exercises in his aesthetic: quietness, slowness, resonance, pauses as imagined fulfilments of sound, and melodies that form gradually over long spans of time. The result is a filigree, fragile music on the verge of falling silent, related in this to the music of Morton Feldman, whom Jaecker holds in high esteem.
In “Sphinx (Soprano, Alto flute, Viola)” of 1999 Jaecker takes up an untitled poem that Heinrich Heine placed at the head of the third edition of his “Buch der Lieder” in 1839. In it the Sphinx’s question is turned back on her: “O schöne Sphinx! O löse mir / Das Rätsel, das wunderbare!” (O lovely Sphinx, solve the wondrous riddle for me). As in the legend, the Sphinx remains silent. Jaecker condenses Heine’s verses once again: the only audible text is this plea, together with a “was” (what) from the first stanza, from which the many vowel and consonant phonemes of the soprano also derive. As quiet, breathed, voiceless sighs they shape the piece and are mirrored in the two instruments, especially the alto flute, which highlights breathing as the basic condition of all life.
In “Nacht, Stille (Viola, Piano)” of 2000 Jaecker has captured in the title the connection between night and attentive listening. Fricke refers to Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Daybreak” (1881), where the ear appears as the “organ of fear”, which could only have developed so richly in the night and half-night, and music as an “art of night and half-night”. Jaecker’s music, Fricke writes, need not be heard at night; but heard in the dark, it reminds us of what is vital by day as well: to keep one’s ears open.
The Ensemble Tra I Tempi performs under the direction of Michael Veltman, with Nicole Ferrein (soprano), Evelin Degen (alto flute), Joachim Striepens (saxophone), Christiane Veltman and Almut Steinhausen (violin, viola), Gabrielle Kancachian (viola), Barbara Degener (cello), Martin Ingenhütt (double bass), Sandra Schulze (harp) and Tibor Herczeg (percussion); the composer himself plays the piano. For “String orchestra” the ensemble is enlarged by further strings. The recordings were made in February and in the summer of 2000 in the Erholungshaus of Bayer AG in Leverkusen.