Bernhard Lang

GAME XXII for Three Orchestras

dedicated to Petr Kotík

When Petr Kotík asked me to write a piece for three orchestras, I was at Royaumont Abbey. After one day considering I realized this to be a single opportunity in my life and I wrote back: „I'll do it!“.

At Royaumont I started to create the structure of the whole piece, defining the relationships between the three orchestras: I imagined them to represent three gigantic turntables at different speeds, always playing assynchronously, the harmonies coinciding only at one point in the piece: synchronicity as absolute counterpoint, the simultaneity of difference.

GAME XXII is the climax and perhaps the end of the Game-series, using open structures, wherein the players have to make descisions of their own, resulting in an open permutative structure, sounding differently each time. Moreover there are counterpoints between determined and open structures in various combinations.

The basic structural element in this piece is the loop, either in a group of models, or as written out patterns.

The piece is dedicated to Petr Kotík, and follows exactly the line-up of his Variations.

Bernhard Lang, Vienna, 20.05.2025