“I think it’s a great journey that explores the idea of invention. How does invention happen? How does it happen that one thing leads to another? And not simply as a habit, but as a necessity? This development takes us on an eventful journey. And what then happens, all in good time leads us ever further. We become witnesses to a process of invention. And that is why the piece is not a finished product, but an unfinished, constantly searching, searching energy.”

This is roughly how Chaya Czernowin, half in German and half in English, explained the fundamental ideas behind her work “The Fabrication of Light” in a panel discussion in Vienna in 2023. However, Czernowin’s words also adequately describe her general composition. There are few creative musicians today whose works are as imaginative and astonishingly unpredictable as hers. Logicality and surprise, astonishment and satisfaction at developments, the unexpected and as if heard again from afar, the perception of space and time: all these and even more elements repeatedly enter into astonishing connections in Czernowin’s music in her professional-artistic “fabrication of sounds”, as one might call it. Therefore, Her composing is also in a process, always leading to new energetic outbursts and subtly echoing echoes. Questions of identity play an important role here: of individuals in certain political realities, for example, in the stage works, but also purely musically, for example, in the formation of “meta-instruments”, into which she merges small ensembles only to split them up again.

Her biography may feed the sensitivity required for this: Born in Haifa in 1957 and trained in Israel, Germany and the USA, including with Dieter Schnebel and Brian Ferneyhough, Chaya Czernowin has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships. After three years at the Vienna University of Music, she has been a professor at Harvard University since 2009.

A new work begins for me with ...
a stream of sound images, sound movements, energies and ideas. A little later comes a general sense of its energy, colour and smell …

I find my ideas ...
everywhere: in nature, in moments of interaction with a friend, in a casual word, in a fleeting everyday sound, in a strange touch … When I go into a piece, I might read reality through its prism and its challenges – and reality responds with ideas, questions/solutions and sometimes false clues.

The most important thing for me with my performers is ...
the depth, uniqueness and openness in their approach to music and their instruments/voices.

I write for people,
who have a need to experience the unknown. They listen awake, with their heart, mind and body, and the gates of their inner world are wide open.

I prefer to listen to music that ...
teaches me something I don’t know yet.

It pains me, ...
when my work is played badly from the ground up.

It gives me hope that ...
there are so many interesting young composers.

Music can ...
change a person’s life.

The ORF RSO Vienna will perform works by Chaya Czernowin for orchestra, ensembles and string quartet under Maxime Pascal, the Arditti Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Webern Ensemble Vienna, the Ensemble Kontrapunkte and the Black Page Orchestra.