Esa-Pekka Salonen: Homunculus (Parts)

Homunculus is a short (circa 12 minutes) work for string quartet, which the composer wrote during the Autumn months of 2007 for the Johannes Quartet.He wanted to compose a piece that would be very compact in form and duration, but still contain many different characters and textures. In other words, a little piece that behaves like a big piece.He has long been fascinated (and amused) by the arcane spermists? theory, who held the belief that the sperm was in fact a "little man" (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum, with an endless chain of homunculi. This was not necessarily considered by spermists a fatal objection however, as it neatly explained how it was that "in Adam" all had sinned: the whole of humanity was already contained in his loins.He decided to call my piece Homunculus despite the obvious weaknesses of the spermists? thinking, as he found the idea of a perfect little man strangely moving.

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