Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
En amor duro, for piano (1991)
I. En la más grande dulzura - Casi llorando
II. In Einer Kräuterwiese [13:19]
III. Me siento tarde a componer con las uñas pintadas de naranja [28:29]
IV. Besando una rosa rosa - Como el viento suave - Dramatiquissimo - Después de limpiar profundamente el alma [35:09]
V. Silencio para..... [48:09]
Hildegard Kleeb, piano
Large, white sheets of paper in oblong format, staves that end nowhere and have no dividing bar lines. On the sheets are dots and lines, a few notes, obviously written down in a hurry. No tempo is stipulated, and dynamic markings are rare. The notes on the staves for left and right hand are far apart, keep their distance from one another. Chords seldom thicken the brittle musical texture. Sometimes, the narrow range of sound is torn open by notes in extreme registers, but these cannot endanger its powerful gravitational pull. Small intervals and long, almost endless repetitions keep the music in the middle. "They look so helpless you could almost think a five-year-old had written them, someone who can’t write music", Maria de Alvear says of these scores. "But, of course, I did know how to write music. I just made a clean sweep."
The piece stretches over more than an hour. The music gives no visual clues as to why this is so. Perhaps, however, one can hear why; perhaps one feels, like the composer, that the music needs precisely this amount of time. An analysis of the score would not be of much help: it would not be possible to ascertain a structural plan or logical architecture. Maria de Alvear has not constructed this music, but just written it down: "In my childhood I wrote quite a lot of automatic pieces from compulsion. But because it happened from compulsion, it was actually a lie. But then, in 1989/90 - I can still remember exactly - I sat down one afternoon and wrote a piece automatically that is in my opinion the most important work of my life: the piano piece "De Puro Amor" - "For Pure Love". And it really was written from pure love. It was the point that brought me together with my childhood. Suddenly I understood: there it was. It was a present. One afternoon I simply scribbled it down - and that was also a new beginning as far as writing music was concerned."
With "écriture automatique" or "automatic writing", Surrealism - as represented by André Breton - wanted to gain access to the Ich. This technical device was to be used to break through the blockade of the rational intellect and penetrate the subconscious in order to "express the real function of thinking" (Breton). Maria de Alvear’s technique of automatic writing, which she has used for a large number of pieces, is not intended to go more deeply into the Ich, but, instead, to emerge from it. She explains that her form of automatic writing takes place in a non-thinking state, and says it can be compared with the way a monkey plays by picking things up, looking at and examining them, before turning to so - either through boredom or because something new has attracted its attention. In automatic writing, the concentration wanders from one thing to another, without intent and without direction. Maria de Alvear says that automatic writing creates a free space far from any constraints or goals, far from society, and far from one’s own emotions. In this free space, the concentration is focused solely on musical energy and experiencing the present, and in this way it becomes open for spiritual experiences.
Spiritual experiences are the soil in which Maria de Alvear's work takes root: spirituality permeates her art both as personal experience and as a message, and is defended there against the omnipotence of western rationality. "Understanding that takes place somewhere beyond our brains is not accepted as understanding, and certainly not as knowledge," criticises Maria de Alvear. "It isn’t even perceived as being knowledge. This is the problem. There is a lot of knowledge which people don’t know they have - because their brain doesn’t accept it as knowledge. The yardstick they always use is that of rational intelligence. But there are completely different forms of knowledge: there is also spiritual understanding. But this can only be learnt through spiritual experience, and, of course, remains incomprehensible to people that don’t have this spiritual experience. It could be compared with bodily experiences, which are not transmissible. Here we’re dealing with areas for which our civilisation does not have any tradition of interpretation. We don’t have any science of the soul except for psychology, which, however, as "psycho-logy" - is rational and therefore contradictory. There is no "escuola del alma" or "escuola del espirito." --Raoul Mörchen
Art by Kitagawa Utamaro
En amor duro, for piano (1991)
I. En la más grande dulzura - Casi llorando
II. In Einer Kräuterwiese [13:19]
III. Me siento tarde a componer con las uñas pintadas de naranja [28:29]
IV. Besando una rosa rosa - Como el viento suave - Dramatiquissimo - Después de limpiar profundamente el alma [35:09]
V. Silencio para..... [48:09]
Hildegard Kleeb, piano
Large, white sheets of paper in oblong format, staves that end nowhere and have no dividing bar lines. On the sheets are dots and lines, a few notes, obviously written down in a hurry. No tempo is stipulated, and dynamic markings are rare. The notes on the staves for left and right hand are far apart, keep their distance from one another. Chords seldom thicken the brittle musical texture. Sometimes, the narrow range of sound is torn open by notes in extreme registers, but these cannot endanger its powerful gravitational pull. Small intervals and long, almost endless repetitions keep the music in the middle. "They look so helpless you could almost think a five-year-old had written them, someone who can’t write music", Maria de Alvear says of these scores. "But, of course, I did know how to write music. I just made a clean sweep."
The piece stretches over more than an hour. The music gives no visual clues as to why this is so. Perhaps, however, one can hear why; perhaps one feels, like the composer, that the music needs precisely this amount of time. An analysis of the score would not be of much help: it would not be possible to ascertain a structural plan or logical architecture. Maria de Alvear has not constructed this music, but just written it down: "In my childhood I wrote quite a lot of automatic pieces from compulsion. But because it happened from compulsion, it was actually a lie. But then, in 1989/90 - I can still remember exactly - I sat down one afternoon and wrote a piece automatically that is in my opinion the most important work of my life: the piano piece "De Puro Amor" - "For Pure Love". And it really was written from pure love. It was the point that brought me together with my childhood. Suddenly I understood: there it was. It was a present. One afternoon I simply scribbled it down - and that was also a new beginning as far as writing music was concerned."
With "écriture automatique" or "automatic writing", Surrealism - as represented by André Breton - wanted to gain access to the Ich. This technical device was to be used to break through the blockade of the rational intellect and penetrate the subconscious in order to "express the real function of thinking" (Breton). Maria de Alvear’s technique of automatic writing, which she has used for a large number of pieces, is not intended to go more deeply into the Ich, but, instead, to emerge from it. She explains that her form of automatic writing takes place in a non-thinking state, and says it can be compared with the way a monkey plays by picking things up, looking at and examining them, before turning to so - either through boredom or because something new has attracted its attention. In automatic writing, the concentration wanders from one thing to another, without intent and without direction. Maria de Alvear says that automatic writing creates a free space far from any constraints or goals, far from society, and far from one’s own emotions. In this free space, the concentration is focused solely on musical energy and experiencing the present, and in this way it becomes open for spiritual experiences.
Spiritual experiences are the soil in which Maria de Alvear's work takes root: spirituality permeates her art both as personal experience and as a message, and is defended there against the omnipotence of western rationality. "Understanding that takes place somewhere beyond our brains is not accepted as understanding, and certainly not as knowledge," criticises Maria de Alvear. "It isn’t even perceived as being knowledge. This is the problem. There is a lot of knowledge which people don’t know they have - because their brain doesn’t accept it as knowledge. The yardstick they always use is that of rational intelligence. But there are completely different forms of knowledge: there is also spiritual understanding. But this can only be learnt through spiritual experience, and, of course, remains incomprehensible to people that don’t have this spiritual experience. It could be compared with bodily experiences, which are not transmissible. Here we’re dealing with areas for which our civilisation does not have any tradition of interpretation. We don’t have any science of the soul except for psychology, which, however, as "psycho-logy" - is rational and therefore contradictory. There is no "escuola del alma" or "escuola del espirito." --Raoul Mörchen
Art by Kitagawa Utamaro
