Twelve Tones for Flute and Piano

Dr. Hans-Joachim Koellreutter (1915-2005) was the director of a branch of the Goethe Institut in New Delhi in the 1960’s. He was active as a composer in Germany and left for Brazil during the Nazi era, taking with him Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method which he introduced to many Brazilian composers. Luckily, he was posted to New Delhi in his later years, and that gave me the chance to learn from him, as it was just around that time that the wish to be a composer had crystallized in my heart.

I studied 16^th Century Counterpoint, Traditional Harmony and Composition with him between the ages of 14 and 17. As far as I know, I was Dr. Koellreutter’s only composition student in India. He had explained to me the fundamentals of the twelve-tone technique during this time, though I did not have any detailed knowledge about how to apply the method, and had never heard any twelve-tone works by the famous triumvirate of the Second Viennese School, nor indeed any other contemporary works. On my 17th birthday in 1969, just after I had finished high school, Dr. Koellreutter presented me with a copy of the score of Anton Webern’s Variations for Piano, op. 27.  This twelve-tone composition by Webern somewhat inspired this piece of mine, and frankly I am still surprised at how complete and concise a statement this appears to me to be, despite being such an early, youthful piece.

The exposure to an important and landmark technique of modern music, at the age of 14, opened my ears to the possibility of new sounds and contemporary compositional methods very early in life. If Webern could begin his piece with a major 7th, well then I imagined cheekily, so could I, and so I did! My piano writing in this work is very spare and composed of small motivic fragments, somewhat like Webern, with minutely adjusted dynamics. I had never written something like that before. Might this be the first twelve-tone piece ever composed in India? Maybe so! The tone row is shown at the top of the score, and it is easy to follow and see how it was applied, as it happens, pretty strictly.

I brought the completed piece in manuscript to Dr. Koellreutter in one of my last lessons before he departed for Tokyo in 1969. Since he was also an accomplished flautist, we tried out the work together, with me at the piano, him reading the score over my shoulder. After playing it through, he told me that he thought it was a “breakthrough” piece for me, written confidently in a contemporary idiom. But it was never performed publicly so I haven’t heard it since.

As I was going through my old composition manuscript book, I decided it was worth giving it a life and I am indeed grateful that Stephan Meier and the BCMG, an ensemble that has so generously championed my work, have offered the work a first public performance, 55 years after it was written. The piece is almost exactly what it was in 1969, but I took the liberty to make a few small tweaks, as I would have done at the time anyway.

I have dedicated the score to Dr. Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, in gratitude and memory of my first ever composition teacher.

Param Vir
15 September 2024, London