The Discovery of History

Composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann once spoke of the “spherical shape of time”, meaning that the past, present, and future “of our spiritual reality”See Bernd Alois Zimmermann, “Vom Handwerk des Komponisten”, in: idem, Intervall und Zeit, ed. Wilhelm Christof Wolfgang Werner Bitter, Mainz 1974, p. 31-37, here p. 35 are not separate from one another, but exist concurrently. With this conceptual framework, music acts as a mediator between the times. This viewpoint is all the more valid today because all the music that has ever been written and recorded is more easily and quickly available than ever before.
For Cerha, the history of music has always been highly meaningful. Even as a 12-year-old, in the 1930s, he could be found on the ground floor of the Vienna State Opera “two or three times a week”,Schriften: ein Netzwerk, Vienna 2001, p. 27 where he became acquainted with the music of Wagner and Strauss. As a violinist, he interpreted the works of Bach and Mendelssohn; as a conductor, he repeatedly showed how the phenomena of today are historically anchored through the concert cycle Wege in unsere Zeit. However, Cerha devoted himself with particular dedication to the early Baroque period: His specially founded ensemble Camerata Frescobaldiana regularly performed early Baroque music, which Cerha edited himself.

His awareness of music history is abundantly reflected throughout his work. Traces of it lead from the revival of ancient forms, as in Toccata, Ricercar, and Passacaglia, tying in to the early days of Western music history in Hymnus, and on to an almost postmodern recomposition in Paraphrase über den Anfang der 9. Sinfonie von Beethoven.