A spotlight by the French poet Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) inspired Gerhard Stäbler in the month of February 1986 to the graphic composition Hart auf hart. for ensemble(s): Breaking through speach ... leads to rejecting the usual limitations of man and his abilities and to broadening to infinity the boundaries of what is usually called reality. Antonin Artaud has the theatre in mind, the total theatre; the American composer Earle Brown (*1926) is thinking of music, when he makes a statement with his graphic scores November '52, and most of all December '52. More precisely: when he proposes to the musicians to free themselves of slavishly crossing off the notes and to allow their imagination to take its own course – with rectangles, which could be tones, but might as well be harmonies, a single hissing or crackling as well as complex sound fields. The width of the rectangles may indicate the intensity or the complexity of a musical action; its length – as in traditional notation – the duration. Concerning the space (Earle Brown takes into consideration this aspect as well), even this loose marking might lead to changes; it might, for instance, change tones to noises or modulate rigid sounds to curved ones.
In Hart auf hart., experiences Gerhard Stäbler made during many years flow together, both from the immeditate time when the score was written and such ones lying back further, dating from the late Sixties or early Seventies and so giving a link to those graphics of Earle Brown from the year 1952 which have already become historical.
Following the graphic picture – a montage of bar code prize tags of various size, single players or instrumental groups act against each other, hart auf hart (tough and tough) at first, but increasingly pervading one another afterwards. In details, bars of various thickness with clearly marked gaps suggest hart auf hart and expect – musical – interpretation. This covers all the aspects of a composition and results in playing instructions: this way hart auf hart, very loud and very soft, extremely long and briefly touched, extremely high and extremely low, blown and bowed, plucked and beaten, really hurting and softly caressing, historically burdened and unconventionally loose ... musical passages may alternate. But more than that: while composing by improvisation or improvising by composing – opposites start to overlap, to mix; extremes, clashing together, start to argue.

Gerhard Stäbler