Michael Drewes : Complicompositio I

The expression "complicompositio" is actually more of a term of ridicule, composed of the Latin complicatio = "complication" and compositio = "composition, compilation." I was inspired to this by an e-mail from Mr. Gerhard Müllritter of May 18, 2006, who wrote: "I sometimes also find it tiresome that one thinks one always has to compose terribly difficult (technically and musically) pieces for the sake of seriousness." At first I had studied works by Bach, and so the Baroque way of writing music was before my eyes. At that time, 1961-1965, I was also a great follower of Tchaikovsky whose writing approached the Baroque very closely. But when I began to study Beethoven, I was surprised at how amazingly simple the notation looked in his work. I think of the first movement of the "Eroica" symphony and likewise of that of the "Fifth." I commented, "Almost like the solfège in music lessons at school!" To this I must remark, however, that the slow movements also seem more complicated in Beethoven because while in the faster pieces the smallest note value is the eighth, there are sixteenths and thirty-second notes in the slower ones. Much later I had to realize with myself that some of my works were alarmingly simple, at least in appearance. As a result of the correspondence with Mr. Müllritter, I then gave some of my works which were written for film orchestra and thus looked quite complicated despite their simplicity, the title "Complicompositio" along with a number to distinguish them from each other.