"Wundgeträumt"

"Dreamed sore"

for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola and Cello (2004/2005)

Dedicated to the "ensemble recherche"

Even in Korea, our modern, western-oriented society considers subjective, private dreams to be out of bounds of reality; as it is impressed upon us by the media, we prefer to see dreams as a virtual sensation. Far-eastern perception, on the other hand, unites Dream, Life and Death, Reality and Creation to an Entirety that lends humility to human existence. Following the lines of Byung-Chul Han's poem, which he wrote for my stage production "MONDSCHATTEN" (Shadows of the Moon), the totality of our oppressed, remorseful, tarnished survival develops unharmed out of the plum blossom within the hollowness of the present. My music does not follow the poem line for line, of course, but assimilates the thoughts and the figures found in the poem, illustrating the images and counter images according to Buddhist tradition, which never ceased to acknowledge that death is a bridge to recurrence.

A great cosmopolitan European, George Steiner, puts it like this: "the implicit or explicit indication of supernatural power, of the frontier, within this moto spirituale, is of utmost importance. Many western works of art and literature witness to the fact that we are neighbours to the Unknown, that we are trapped between orders of pragmatic substance, which themselves are permeable to that which is on the other side, that which originates beyond the "shadowline"."

Younghi Pagh-Paan, March 11, 2005, Bremen

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