Tobias PM Schneid | Pas de Trios - Times-they-are-a-changin´ | 2019 | 13'

Trio percussion, piano & cello/voice

Link for the score | Composer's Website

“Pas de Trios“ is part of the full-length ballet “The Art of Communication“ dealing with the ability/inability of humans to communicate with each other. The instrumentation ranges from solo (individual) to duo (partnership), trio (manage a trios), quintet (family) up to large ensemble with soloist (Society) and back to solo again.
The respective situations are transferred into a musical sign language.

In the case of the Trio it starts with individual statements of the three instruments just to have – after 10 bars – the first quick and one bar only nearly identical line to be stated in all instruments. In the following parts, nearly every aspect from human communication possibilities is tried out.

From a vivid, completing-each-other conversation in which every individual statement is musically developed by each other, to a situation, where everybody is talking/playing in its own language/time layer, so that one has the impression, that three (or more) pieces are played at the same time (and so, nobody is listening to or understanding each other) up to unison parts or a part of permanently repeated chords (piano) with the cello repeating also one single note (standstill/loneliness) and the percussion player (as the only free person in that situation) is improvising above this soundscape of repetitions. Just imagine to be part of a theatre-piece that tries to explore all possible varieties of communication between human beings.

BUT: of course this piece can also be listened to as a piece of musical structures only. Freedom of listening is the main character of (at least my) musical art.