Symphony No. 5 e-Moll "The Elegic"

It was a great challenge for me to compose a fifth symphony. The fifth symphony of a composer had always been something special since the Romantic period: music with great symbolic power. And only to name a few important composers: Beethoven’s Fifth, Schubert’s Fifth, Bruckner’s Fifth (with the gigantic double fugue in the final, a contrasting masterpiece), Mahler’s Fifth (with the trumpet fanfare at the beginning), Sibelius Fifth (transformation of the symphonic form, culminating in the seventh). All this knowledge of such great masters gave me respect, and gave me the idea of writing a fifth symphony myself. A feeling within me drove me to try and write my own fifth symphony, in the heavy-handed key in E minor, it is an elegiac symphony.

Inwardly, I was likely to return to the stage of composing a tragic symphony, after the rather positive fourth symphony. Also, after the first sketches, the Fifth will show a very large symphony, bigger than the third. In the composition of the symphony, I always felt that I wrote it out of a certain reason or feeling, without being able to guess what this reason might be. I am still firmly convinced that there are no coincidences, only fate and even to this day I know exactly what has driven me to write the Fifth part. I do not want to be misunderstood, I am by no means comparable to the great masters, which I mentioned above in the text. However, my symphony has a lot to do with destiny. On the one hand with my own and on the other with the fate very close to me and close proximity to these. Again and again, I meet people who are at my side for a while, then suddenly go back, others come and stay forever. It is these people, with whom I share my innermost being, indestructible closeness, until suddenly the fate blows out of a clear sky with someone, or at one with an uncertain outcome. In the end there is again the loneliness. How can a man handle that ?! The consciousness of this moves me constantly and I know now that this will stop, yes it will follow up once again, since it is also my destiny. I often ask myself why I found important people only late in my life and now I know that they will survive me, while it is exactly the other way round with other people. In my personal case, it is a realization with great implications for my own future. I will not mention the names of these people at this point, but I can say that I understand more and more how the music of the Fifth Symphony originated in me. Well, I would like to say nothing more precise about the form and architecture of my Fifth part, I will not write an analysis nor topic descriptions. I will definitely not give details of the sentences and also not why I have something somewhere somehow described for some reason.

As before, I write the music in historically grown forms, but this is not important in this case. Yes, the music has certainly emerged from my heart and has to be understood programmatically, but it is simply absolute music that does not need any analysis. All I want is that the performers will understand and hopefully hope that this music emerged from the depths of my soul, my heart, from the heart of knowing that fate is no coincidence, at best – coincidence is a destiny. I give everyone a deep insight into my heart, everyone can see this or hear a lot more if he wants. I hope that the people who are close to me will feel as I am, how I think, what makes me busy, makes me cry. All this is, in this sense, the storyline, the story much more of my life to this day with a small outlook, into the future.

I dedicate this symphony to all people close to me, those whom I mean, know this very well. I love you.

In May 2017

Thomas Trachsel