Bernd Richard Deutsch
“Intensity” Bernd Richard Deutsch “Intensity”

What makes a good title, and what functions it should fulfil, has been debated for centuries. As a threshold between a work and the outside world, titles often do far more than simply name a piece. They shape reception, raise expectations, can spark curiosity, or productively unsettle us. “A fine title is the true pimp of a book,” Antoine Furetière observed with a wink as early as the 17th century. At the same time, the French writer and scholar warned against overblown announcements and red herrings: “The titles of some books are like the signboards of inns; they often promise an excellent wine, yet one finds only vinegar within.”

In the case of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s orchestral piece Intensity, there is no danger of this. With scarcely surpassable concision, the title stakes out – by means of a single word – the field the piece explores in musical terms. As a verbal key to the work, it sets the tone, directs our gaze, and guides our ear, while still leaving ample room for association. Beyond that, the title points to the context in which Deutsch, born in 1977, wrote the work, dedicated to Franz Welser-Möst, in 2019–20: “Intensity reflects the months before the piece came into being, which were very intense for me in both personal and artistic terms.” At the time, the highly productive Viennese composer was Fellow Composer with the Cleveland Orchestra and had the opportunity, even before he began composing, to experience at close quarters the virtuosity and the intense, highly emotional sound of the orchestra under Welser-Möst.

That music, as an art of time and expression, is uniquely capable of conveying experiences of presence and intensity has often been remarked upon. Thus the poet and pioneer of literary modernism Charles Baudelaire, under the impression of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, stated: “Nothing expresses with such intensity the mysteries of the soul and the tremors of the nervous system as music.” In his piece, Deutsch addresses this capacity of music to embody different states of energy and processes of excitement in a compelling way. At the same time, he emphasises that “intensity” is a category which, for him, carries special weight across different realms of reality and takes on different forms: “It is a quality, or a state of experience, that I expect both from life and from art in general. In my work there are two forms of intensity: on the one hand, energy, vehemence, and activity; on the other, depth of feeling, contemplation, and emotion.”

To explore these different manifestations of intensity in musical terms, Deutsch chooses a large orchestra with a rich palette of colours: triple woodwinds and brass, an extensive percussion section offering great variety of timbre, harp, piano and celesta, as well as strings. Formally, Intensity is clearly structured. The emotional centre of the 18‑minute work is a contemplative middle section, which explores “inward-facing” manifestations of intensity and unfolds a fascinating sound world full of surprising colours. It is enclosed by two energetic outer sections full of power, dynamism, and density of events. The transition to the final section, marked by overwhelming drive, and the apotheotic close of the work have unmistakably ecstatic traits. The unifying element is a trumpet signal: as a motivic nucleus, it runs, in different guises, through all three sections and opens and closes the piece with striking effect.