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Based on the given time frame, I would like to outline the conceptual background and aesthetic focus of my compositions using selected audiovisual excerpts. As an analogy borrowed from botany, I consider my various works as ‘offshoots’ of the same fundamental principles – they are like the branches of the houseleek, representing a metaphor for content-related networks.

My work deals with multidimensional, other-worldly transcendental spaces, which I try to re-create over and over again in my music-theatrical concepts. Each piece is founded around a specific story in order to breathe life into realities, feelings and contexts. The respective ideas function as a kind of bridge through which the immaterial is transferred into the perceptible and as a refuge where the longed-for becomes reality.

Space, time, sound, images, light, silence … In my perception, these are equal components within a superordinate conceptual system. Only through the strictly calculated temporal and spatial interweaving of these elements within the compositional framework can, so I hope, the deeper meaning of my music be revealed. The aim is to create a breathing, organic sound entity that exists in its own time and rests within itself.

The underlying thematic focus relates to my personal experiences of war and migration, coupled with the associated longing for a world based on equality and solidarity. 

The fact that all our knowledge, emotions and desires are rooted in experiences that stem exclusively from the One World we have been granted has fascinated me magically since time immemorial. I guess this is also the reason for my enthusiasm about space exploration. I try to imagine other Worlds and to sonify the feelings and thoughts they trigger in me.

The infinite diversity of Being, Tomorrow, the Unpredictable, the Unhappened – and the search for answers to questions to which there are, or cannot be, any answers – these are the defining principles of my compositional journey.

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Belma Bešlić-Gál / Vienna, September 21, 2023

Austrian Music Theatre Day 2023