The Harmony of Ruptures — Für Keinen

“The Harmony of Ruptures,” Samuel Vriezen’s magnum opus — a phenomenal work of poetry, about the world and us, and about us and the world. Any discursive commentary on my part would amount to bombast; it’s a hopeless task — I lack the talent for it. But I do have a talent for something else: placing a musical commentary alongside it, as a kind of counterpoint.

When I read the book, I immediately thought of the piano piece Für Keinen, which I wrote a few months ago. It has a similarly tight structure, and a sense of melancholy that is never nostalgic, because the distance it maintains ensures that the melancholy is not expressed directly — and thus not flatly — but rather staged. ‘Blue fire’.

With thanks to Kristof Lauwers of Stichting LOGOS, who had the piece performed by a piano robot.

— Cornelis de Bondt, 10 July 2025