„Butterfly Stories” is the title of a novel by William T. Vollmann, who is one of the most original and inventive contemporary voices in American literature in my opinion. While reading the novel, I was fascinated by the morbid, dark and sexually inflicted mood. This novel is fully anchored in South East Asia’s brothel scene and is a man’s obsessive and self destructive quest for the one and only woman to love, for everlasting and all encompassing love.
Under this dirty, decadent, intoxicated and shuddering surface though, there is a wonderful and tender love story, which is unique in terms of it’s fragility and evocative devotion; a kind of palimpsest of love.
I did not set scenes or storylines of this book in music. My aim was to find an equal music to these fragile literary colours and voices, freed of the surface of dirt and decadence.
Flute and Bassoon lead an introverted dialogue, a kind of double song line, reduced to melody, unimpressed of the sparsely accompanying orchestra. Melodic lines, freed of all exhibitionistic virtuosity and in permanent interchange of approaching and moving away from each other.
“Butterfly Stories” is dedicated to the wonderful musicians Maria Fedotova and Robert Buschek, without whose inspiration, this work would never have become the work it is.
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