The site of GIOVANNI GROSSKOPF, composer and pianist
A) REVIEWS ON HIS MUSIC
IN GENERAL
"I now have a collaboration with some young Italian composers... What I am looking for is a composer who is able to have what I call a "stage feeling". There are not so many of them. By stage feeling, I mean people who can write music with the right dramatic effect...some of them are quite talented and it has been interesting to collaborate with them. Giovanni Grosskopf is 33 years old; Carlo Boccadoro is 36..."
- Emanuele Segre, guitarist, on the Classical Guitar Magazine, September 2000
"Your music, by the way, I found very refreshing to hear, in the midst of the clamour of post-serial 'free dissonance' and tired, monotonous ideas which lost their freshness in the 60's. Your system of writing is very clearly goal directed without being founded in the tradition of tonal music, and that means that it's expressive without being conventional. I especially like the fact that you don't assault the listener with clouds of notes, as is so easy for inexperienced composers to do, but take extreme care that every note is vital to the perception of the form and progression of the work."
- David Golightly, composer, U.S.A., in a private letter, 2000
"...young emerging composers: Giovanni Grosskopf and Carlo Boccadoro"
- ("Sei Corde", October-December 2000)
"Giovanni Grosskopf, a pianist and composer born near Milan in 1966, whose compositions have already been performed in The Netherlands, Brazil, U.S.A., Switzerland and, of course, Italy, is today the subject of our program. He graduated at the Conservatory of Milan in Composition, Piano and Electronic Composition which he masters with amazing competence. He was one of the dearest pupils of Niccolò Castiglioni, from whom he has inherited the same natural touch, the crystal-clear tone colours, the religious and magic feeling of sound. Among his teachers there are also Pippo Molino, Donatoni and Ligeti (composition masterclasses). He has always been interested in the practical application of electronics in music, and he has developed a software to analyze and classify atonal chords on the basis of their individual timbre. Since his first compositions Grosskopf has shown his deep love for ethnic music from all over the world and he has passionately investigated into some peculiar features of folk music: immediate, true, but shrill beauty of timbre, natural and each time new, typical of those remote auditive landscapes, microtonal scales, peculiar ways of producing sound in open-air environments, naturally and spontaneously irregular and elastic rhythms, ornamentation of melodic lines, continuous desire for irregularities, perceived as more natural than regularity, very close relationship between teacher and pupil, total involvement in experiencing the musical event, naturalness, spontaneousness. Grosskopf's music exceeds the context in which it begins to exist, it overhangs on us in a challenging way, as it were a fraternity act with Nature, according to the beautiful definition by Renzo Cresti. Music comes to Grosskopf as leaves in the wind (as we could say recalling Keats), it's spontaneous, sprightly music. It loves the material concreteness of vibrating wood, of a bowed or plucked string; it mixes with modern world through many ethnic quotations, but it is always unreducible to any specific geographical definition. It is nowadays music, but it refers to something else, it "hints at", it "pays homage to", it contains much more than what we can see on the written page. It cannot be reduced by an analysis to any sociological, militant, partisan interpretation: these always turn out to be asphyxiant, suffocating approaches. Grosskopf simply welcomes the sounds he meets and writes them down on the score or fixes them on the tape. He waits for the auditive events that occur around him and he questions them, he captures the satellites in orbit around him and makes them move in his own atmosphere. Grosskopf's poetry and talent, together with deepness of language, unexpectedness, beauty tout court also includes the use of intense lyric melodic phrases, very tuneful ones, in an atonal melodic and harmonic context. Very powerful suggestion comes from Grosskopf's electronic music. Natural events, water, earth, fire, and air mix with sounds, birds and other animal cries. The mystery and the grandiosity of nature find their ideal space in this huge formal container. Grosskopf contemplates the nature with amazement and with the eyes of a child, reinventing sonorities and paths of the human wonder. The world that takes life from Grosskopf's sounds never is described in a banal way. It is recreated by electronics, but never is cold nor abstracted, it is not virtual, according to nowadays fashion. On the contrary it is intense, majestic, full of sacred and religious awe. A wise explorer in front of the sacred immensity of the big mountain. Grosskopf's amazement develops into questioning, waiting, waking, into a wish to know deeper, a wish of adventure, a travel into knowledge. Never is Nature reduced, observed only from a single point of view: it is often a cruel Nature, marked by awe and sorrow. However, in the end, contemplation of beauty, at first only indistinctly seen, prevails. "Yesterday I was not here, today I am", says Grosskopf's music. "It isn't me who makes reality, but I'm fond of it", it seems to go on."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
B) REVIEWS ON SPECIFIC PIECES
IMMAGINI (Images), for solo guitar - LISTEN TO THE PIECE
To order the score:
visit the Musigramma Database, or visit the Publisher's site,
or write to musicmkt@musicmkt.com
mentioning the PUBLICATION DATA OT THE PIECE:
Giovanni Grosskopf, "Immagini", for solo guitar, published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milano, Italy, 1999, Catalog Nr.: S.11445 Z.
"Among the new compositions that give their contribution to enrich the guitar repertoire in these years, we present "Immagini", a small suite in five movements by Giovanni Grosskopf, composed between 1994 and 1996 and recently published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni. (...) A collaboration between the author and the guitarist Emanuele Segre has been developed, that has led to a testing of the technical and instrumental features of the piece, until the piece has been premiered at The Hague, in the spring of 1995. In the same year other two works that include the guitar have been produced: "Lark Music" - for voice, flute and guitar - and "Melodia" - for trombone, flute and guitar - , the same unusual ensemble used in the trio composed by the Hungarian composer György Kurtag. As declared, "Immagini" is composed by five contrasting and well-individuated parts: each movement is a sort of study (...) on a specific aspect of the guitar technique, to discover its expressive possibilities, its colors and peculiar timbres (...). The piece begins with a movement named "Crystal in the Silence" (a little homage to Webern), in which Grosskopf uses a compositional style derived by serialism, generating a delicate and transparent polyphony: (...) one perceives a feeling of purity and lyrism of the single dissonant interval, as we have heard many times in Webern's music, as in the music by Niccolò Castiglioni. In the second movement, again of lyrical mood, but veined with melancholy, (...) owing to which a Norwegian folk tune appears, in an oneiric athmosphere: like a lullaby or a rhyme that one's thought is recalling from a distance, "Ricordi?" ("Do You Remember?" ends in a few bars, like a dream that, when is still taking its shape, is already fading away. The quotation of a folk song is not accidental in Grosskopf's music, but on the contrary shows his profound interest for the ethnic music (...). And exactly to the influences induced by listening it "Musique de balafon", third movement of "Immagini", dues its existence. In this movement the guitar, through the use of percussive sounds, is transformed into this African folk music instrument (...) and engages in a lively and unresting dance, which recalls the athmosphere of a revelling village. (...) Thus we come to the fourth movement, "Meditation", a piece that studies the tunefulness and lyrical expression of the melody, in which the author actuates a personal harmonic research that, though completely autonomous from the tonal system, aims, through new chordal combinations, to create a harmonical system capable to exalt and follow the natural alternation of tension and relaxation in the melody. The author introduces this movement in the following way: "I consider this fourth movement, "Meditation", as one of my best ones. In fact it is the proof that very natural and evident melodies can be composed even in a non-tonal context, not disjoined to a deep communicative eloquence and a great attention to the use of atonal chords that match the melody." A goal that Grosskopf is now continously developing and refining in his more recent compositions, and a research that has been actuated also through the development of a music software to classify the chords (...), now already distributed on the Web. The score ends with a "Finale" ("Ending"), having a "nervous and stamping character, as many traditional finals", in which one hears the echoes of Irish fiddles, (...) (and) dancing, the rhythms of the balafon appear again, to fade away covered by the trills and the rasgueados , until the brilliant and resounding conclusion of this last piece. An interesting work, the happy beginning of Grosskopf's relationship with our instrument (that is already producing another new work for solo guitar) and a work that, owing to the clarity of style and to a well-balanced use of the non traditional techniques, can be studied by pupils of the last years of the guitar course, and by young performers interested to the New Music."
-Elena Càsoli, guitarist, review on "Il Fronimo", guitar and lute magazine, 1999
"From the suite Immagini (Images) for guitar, dated 1994-1996, let's listen to the movements "Ricordi?" ("Do you Remember?" ), Musique de Balafon ("African Marimba Music") and Finale (Ending), three out of the five movements of the suite, short pieces to exemplify Grosskopf's artistic homage to ethnic music, that becomes creative gesture, soundness of thought, archaic signs observed in ecstatic rapture. The distant memory in "Ricordi?" - which is not, however, in Grosskopf's typical style, is given by a harmonics pattern, touching the notes of a pentatonic Norwegian popular song. The second movement suggests sonority, rhythms and stylistic features of the balafon, the African percussion instrument similar to a marimba. The Finale is nervous and stamping, Dionysian, a real 'tour de force' for the performer, whose absolute speed and precision are required. "
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
TRE CORALI (Three Chorales), for piano solo - LISTEN TO THE PIECE - BUY THE SCORE OR THE CD (OR THE MP3 FILES)
"Grosskopf's poetry and talent, together with deepness of language, unexpectedness, beauty tout court also includes the use of intense lyric melodic phrases, very tuneful ones, in an atonal melodic and harmonic context. This is exemplified by his Corali (Chorales), for piano, dated 1997. The simplicity of writing reminds of Erik Satie's Ogives, but the sonority of these Corali is absolutely original. Melodies are partly improvised, but the harmonisation is studied in the least details. The attention is in fact focused on the changes of tension of the melody, in the attempt to match them with identical changes of tension in the chords used in the accompaniment. Not an unnecessary note is to be found in these Corali, deep and simple at the same time. By graduating the tension, the Author allows the listener to perceive a sensation of logical consequence. Grosskopf has been studying for 15 years the chords on the basis of their dissonance and he has created a computer-based analysis technique for this. This simple melodies are presented twice each: the first time they are "naked" and the second time harmonized: the ear follows their path and measures the different weight and the new translucent and changing colour where the harmony occurs: musicality, poetry, talent and technique splendidly blend together."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
I RICHIAMI DELLA GRANDE CASCATA (The Calls of the Great Waterfall), for magnetic tape
"Very powerful suggestion comes from Grosskopf's electronic music. Natural events, water, earth, fire, and air mix with sounds, birds and other animal cries. The mystery and the grandiosity of nature find their ideal space in this huge formal container. Grosskopf contemplates the nature with amazement and with the eyes of a child, reinventing sonorities and paths of the human wonder. The world that takes life from Grosskopf's sounds never is described in a banal way. It is recreated by electronics, but never is cold nor abstracted, it is not virtual, according to nowadays fashion. On the contrary it is intense, majestic, full of sacred and religious awe. A wise explorer in front of the sacred immensity of the big mountain. I Richiami della Grande Cascata (The Calls of the Great Waterfall) describes a journey along a path full of surprises, events, seductions, awes. The musical form is consistent, structured along time, overpoweringly narrative. It tells of the Author's childhood impressions on the Alps. Shepherd calls, human voices, animal cries, short motives from the far European North (Higher Lands too, in their way) a Siberian funeral lament, countrymen dances. In this piece fascinating sonorities are built that are exactly half way between natural sounds originally recorded live (for instance a sound that is half way between a gurgle of water and a woman's voice). The Great Waterfall is a symbol of magnificence, stateliness, purity: sounds run as a flow, as a waterfall indeed, bringing to our mind boundless spaces."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
A FOREST TALE, for magnetic tape - LISTEN TO THE PIECE - BUY THE SCORE OR THE CD (OR THE MP3 FILES)
"The piece A Forest Tale takes life from the influence that the Norwegian folk tales and the paintings of Theodor Kittelsen and Erik Werenskiold - two great folk tales illustrators - have exerted on Grosskopf. These tales narrate of worlds made of dreams and magic, full of children lost in the middle of the forest, at night, when all the night creatures, spirits and trolls awake. The piece shows also an amazement towards reality, that always exceeds our measures. Grosskopf's amazement develops into questioning, waiting, waking, into a wish to know deeper, a wish of adventure, a travel into knowledge. Never is Nature reduced, observed only from a single point of view: it is often a cruel Nature, marked by awe and sorrow. However, in the end, contemplation of beauty, at first only indistinctly seen, prevails. "Yesterday I was not here, today I am", says Grosskopf's music. "It isn't me who makes reality, but I'm fond of it", it seems to go on."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999.
"I now have a collaboration with some young Italian composers... What I am looking for is a composer who is able to have what I call a "stage feeling". There are not so many of them. By stage feeling, I mean people who can write music with the right dramatic effect...some of them are quite talented and it has been interesting to collaborate with them. Giovanni Grosskopf is 33 years old; Carlo Boccadoro is 36..."
- Emanuele Segre, guitarist, on the Classical Guitar Magazine, September 2000
"Your music, by the way, I found very refreshing to hear, in the midst of the clamour of post-serial 'free dissonance' and tired, monotonous ideas which lost their freshness in the 60's. Your system of writing is very clearly goal directed without being founded in the tradition of tonal music, and that means that it's expressive without being conventional. I especially like the fact that you don't assault the listener with clouds of notes, as is so easy for inexperienced composers to do, but take extreme care that every note is vital to the perception of the form and progression of the work."
- David Golightly, composer, U.S.A., in a private letter, 2000
"...young emerging composers: Giovanni Grosskopf and Carlo Boccadoro"
- ("Sei Corde", October-December 2000)
"Giovanni Grosskopf, a pianist and composer born near Milan in 1966, whose compositions have already been performed in The Netherlands, Brazil, U.S.A., Switzerland and, of course, Italy, is today the subject of our program. He graduated at the Conservatory of Milan in Composition, Piano and Electronic Composition which he masters with amazing competence. He was one of the dearest pupils of Niccolò Castiglioni, from whom he has inherited the same natural touch, the crystal-clear tone colours, the religious and magic feeling of sound. Among his teachers there are also Pippo Molino, Donatoni and Ligeti (composition masterclasses). He has always been interested in the practical application of electronics in music, and he has developed a software to analyze and classify atonal chords on the basis of their individual timbre. Since his first compositions Grosskopf has shown his deep love for ethnic music from all over the world and he has passionately investigated into some peculiar features of folk music: immediate, true, but shrill beauty of timbre, natural and each time new, typical of those remote auditive landscapes, microtonal scales, peculiar ways of producing sound in open-air environments, naturally and spontaneously irregular and elastic rhythms, ornamentation of melodic lines, continuous desire for irregularities, perceived as more natural than regularity, very close relationship between teacher and pupil, total involvement in experiencing the musical event, naturalness, spontaneousness. Grosskopf's music exceeds the context in which it begins to exist, it overhangs on us in a challenging way, as it were a fraternity act with Nature, according to the beautiful definition by Renzo Cresti. Music comes to Grosskopf as leaves in the wind (as we could say recalling Keats), it's spontaneous, sprightly music. It loves the material concreteness of vibrating wood, of a bowed or plucked string; it mixes with modern world through many ethnic quotations, but it is always unreducible to any specific geographical definition. It is nowadays music, but it refers to something else, it "hints at", it "pays homage to", it contains much more than what we can see on the written page. It cannot be reduced by an analysis to any sociological, militant, partisan interpretation: these always turn out to be asphyxiant, suffocating approaches. Grosskopf simply welcomes the sounds he meets and writes them down on the score or fixes them on the tape. He waits for the auditive events that occur around him and he questions them, he captures the satellites in orbit around him and makes them move in his own atmosphere. Grosskopf's poetry and talent, together with deepness of language, unexpectedness, beauty tout court also includes the use of intense lyric melodic phrases, very tuneful ones, in an atonal melodic and harmonic context. Very powerful suggestion comes from Grosskopf's electronic music. Natural events, water, earth, fire, and air mix with sounds, birds and other animal cries. The mystery and the grandiosity of nature find their ideal space in this huge formal container. Grosskopf contemplates the nature with amazement and with the eyes of a child, reinventing sonorities and paths of the human wonder. The world that takes life from Grosskopf's sounds never is described in a banal way. It is recreated by electronics, but never is cold nor abstracted, it is not virtual, according to nowadays fashion. On the contrary it is intense, majestic, full of sacred and religious awe. A wise explorer in front of the sacred immensity of the big mountain. Grosskopf's amazement develops into questioning, waiting, waking, into a wish to know deeper, a wish of adventure, a travel into knowledge. Never is Nature reduced, observed only from a single point of view: it is often a cruel Nature, marked by awe and sorrow. However, in the end, contemplation of beauty, at first only indistinctly seen, prevails. "Yesterday I was not here, today I am", says Grosskopf's music. "It isn't me who makes reality, but I'm fond of it", it seems to go on."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
B) REVIEWS ON SPECIFIC PIECES
IMMAGINI (Images), for solo guitar - LISTEN TO THE PIECE
To order the score:
visit the Musigramma Database, or visit the Publisher's site,
or write to musicmkt@musicmkt.com
mentioning the PUBLICATION DATA OT THE PIECE:
Giovanni Grosskopf, "Immagini", for solo guitar, published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milano, Italy, 1999, Catalog Nr.: S.11445 Z.
"Among the new compositions that give their contribution to enrich the guitar repertoire in these years, we present "Immagini", a small suite in five movements by Giovanni Grosskopf, composed between 1994 and 1996 and recently published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni. (...) A collaboration between the author and the guitarist Emanuele Segre has been developed, that has led to a testing of the technical and instrumental features of the piece, until the piece has been premiered at The Hague, in the spring of 1995. In the same year other two works that include the guitar have been produced: "Lark Music" - for voice, flute and guitar - and "Melodia" - for trombone, flute and guitar - , the same unusual ensemble used in the trio composed by the Hungarian composer György Kurtag. As declared, "Immagini" is composed by five contrasting and well-individuated parts: each movement is a sort of study (...) on a specific aspect of the guitar technique, to discover its expressive possibilities, its colors and peculiar timbres (...). The piece begins with a movement named "Crystal in the Silence" (a little homage to Webern), in which Grosskopf uses a compositional style derived by serialism, generating a delicate and transparent polyphony: (...) one perceives a feeling of purity and lyrism of the single dissonant interval, as we have heard many times in Webern's music, as in the music by Niccolò Castiglioni. In the second movement, again of lyrical mood, but veined with melancholy, (...) owing to which a Norwegian folk tune appears, in an oneiric athmosphere: like a lullaby or a rhyme that one's thought is recalling from a distance, "Ricordi?" ("Do You Remember?" ends in a few bars, like a dream that, when is still taking its shape, is already fading away. The quotation of a folk song is not accidental in Grosskopf's music, but on the contrary shows his profound interest for the ethnic music (...). And exactly to the influences induced by listening it "Musique de balafon", third movement of "Immagini", dues its existence. In this movement the guitar, through the use of percussive sounds, is transformed into this African folk music instrument (...) and engages in a lively and unresting dance, which recalls the athmosphere of a revelling village. (...) Thus we come to the fourth movement, "Meditation", a piece that studies the tunefulness and lyrical expression of the melody, in which the author actuates a personal harmonic research that, though completely autonomous from the tonal system, aims, through new chordal combinations, to create a harmonical system capable to exalt and follow the natural alternation of tension and relaxation in the melody. The author introduces this movement in the following way: "I consider this fourth movement, "Meditation", as one of my best ones. In fact it is the proof that very natural and evident melodies can be composed even in a non-tonal context, not disjoined to a deep communicative eloquence and a great attention to the use of atonal chords that match the melody." A goal that Grosskopf is now continously developing and refining in his more recent compositions, and a research that has been actuated also through the development of a music software to classify the chords (...), now already distributed on the Web. The score ends with a "Finale" ("Ending"), having a "nervous and stamping character, as many traditional finals", in which one hears the echoes of Irish fiddles, (...) (and) dancing, the rhythms of the balafon appear again, to fade away covered by the trills and the rasgueados , until the brilliant and resounding conclusion of this last piece. An interesting work, the happy beginning of Grosskopf's relationship with our instrument (that is already producing another new work for solo guitar) and a work that, owing to the clarity of style and to a well-balanced use of the non traditional techniques, can be studied by pupils of the last years of the guitar course, and by young performers interested to the New Music."
-Elena Càsoli, guitarist, review on "Il Fronimo", guitar and lute magazine, 1999
"From the suite Immagini (Images) for guitar, dated 1994-1996, let's listen to the movements "Ricordi?" ("Do you Remember?" ), Musique de Balafon ("African Marimba Music") and Finale (Ending), three out of the five movements of the suite, short pieces to exemplify Grosskopf's artistic homage to ethnic music, that becomes creative gesture, soundness of thought, archaic signs observed in ecstatic rapture. The distant memory in "Ricordi?" - which is not, however, in Grosskopf's typical style, is given by a harmonics pattern, touching the notes of a pentatonic Norwegian popular song. The second movement suggests sonority, rhythms and stylistic features of the balafon, the African percussion instrument similar to a marimba. The Finale is nervous and stamping, Dionysian, a real 'tour de force' for the performer, whose absolute speed and precision are required. "
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
TRE CORALI (Three Chorales), for piano solo - LISTEN TO THE PIECE - BUY THE SCORE OR THE CD (OR THE MP3 FILES)
"Grosskopf's poetry and talent, together with deepness of language, unexpectedness, beauty tout court also includes the use of intense lyric melodic phrases, very tuneful ones, in an atonal melodic and harmonic context. This is exemplified by his Corali (Chorales), for piano, dated 1997. The simplicity of writing reminds of Erik Satie's Ogives, but the sonority of these Corali is absolutely original. Melodies are partly improvised, but the harmonisation is studied in the least details. The attention is in fact focused on the changes of tension of the melody, in the attempt to match them with identical changes of tension in the chords used in the accompaniment. Not an unnecessary note is to be found in these Corali, deep and simple at the same time. By graduating the tension, the Author allows the listener to perceive a sensation of logical consequence. Grosskopf has been studying for 15 years the chords on the basis of their dissonance and he has created a computer-based analysis technique for this. This simple melodies are presented twice each: the first time they are "naked" and the second time harmonized: the ear follows their path and measures the different weight and the new translucent and changing colour where the harmony occurs: musicality, poetry, talent and technique splendidly blend together."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
I RICHIAMI DELLA GRANDE CASCATA (The Calls of the Great Waterfall), for magnetic tape
"Very powerful suggestion comes from Grosskopf's electronic music. Natural events, water, earth, fire, and air mix with sounds, birds and other animal cries. The mystery and the grandiosity of nature find their ideal space in this huge formal container. Grosskopf contemplates the nature with amazement and with the eyes of a child, reinventing sonorities and paths of the human wonder. The world that takes life from Grosskopf's sounds never is described in a banal way. It is recreated by electronics, but never is cold nor abstracted, it is not virtual, according to nowadays fashion. On the contrary it is intense, majestic, full of sacred and religious awe. A wise explorer in front of the sacred immensity of the big mountain. I Richiami della Grande Cascata (The Calls of the Great Waterfall) describes a journey along a path full of surprises, events, seductions, awes. The musical form is consistent, structured along time, overpoweringly narrative. It tells of the Author's childhood impressions on the Alps. Shepherd calls, human voices, animal cries, short motives from the far European North (Higher Lands too, in their way) a Siberian funeral lament, countrymen dances. In this piece fascinating sonorities are built that are exactly half way between natural sounds originally recorded live (for instance a sound that is half way between a gurgle of water and a woman's voice). The Great Waterfall is a symbol of magnificence, stateliness, purity: sounds run as a flow, as a waterfall indeed, bringing to our mind boundless spaces."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999
A FOREST TALE, for magnetic tape - LISTEN TO THE PIECE - BUY THE SCORE OR THE CD (OR THE MP3 FILES)
"The piece A Forest Tale takes life from the influence that the Norwegian folk tales and the paintings of Theodor Kittelsen and Erik Werenskiold - two great folk tales illustrators - have exerted on Grosskopf. These tales narrate of worlds made of dreams and magic, full of children lost in the middle of the forest, at night, when all the night creatures, spirits and trolls awake. The piece shows also an amazement towards reality, that always exceeds our measures. Grosskopf's amazement develops into questioning, waiting, waking, into a wish to know deeper, a wish of adventure, a travel into knowledge. Never is Nature reduced, observed only from a single point of view: it is often a cruel Nature, marked by awe and sorrow. However, in the end, contemplation of beauty, at first only indistinctly seen, prevails. "Yesterday I was not here, today I am", says Grosskopf's music. "It isn't me who makes reality, but I'm fond of it", it seems to go on."
- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999.
