Commissioned by Studio Percussion Graz for the programme XXX – Unser Platz im Universum, a concert format combining contemporary music with a popular-scientific lecture on cosmology by astrophysicist Arnold Hanslmeier.

The work was conceived as a composition for percussion ensemble and voice in a consciously “baroque” stylistic frame, setting a pre-existing text by Helwig Brunner.

It opens with a free improvisation on handpan, evoking a sense of spatial vastness and preparing the contemplative atmosphere of the piece. What follows is a keyboard-style texture inspired by Bach, distributed between handpan and Array mbira in D minor. This reduced instrumentation establishes the fragile harmonic language of the A section.

At the close of this section, vibraphone and two marimbas enter at a characteristic Neapolitan sixth chord — a sonority that becomes structurally and symbolically central to the work. Later in the piece, this harmony coincides with the textual image of “new colours in the sky,” reinforcing its expressive function both harmonically and poetically.

The B section modulates via this Neapolitan to B-flat major, briefly suggesting a new tonal field before F major emerges as the underlying centre through carefully shaped harmonic motion. While the A section remains introspective and restrained, the B section unfolds with a more outward, searching character.

The return to D minor introduces the vocal part, which takes up the melodic material of the A section. Set in a lower register, the voice deepens the dark tonal colour. The Neapolitan harmony again marks the textual moment of “new colours,” uniting structural and semantic layers.

Instead of repeating the earlier modulation, the music remains in D minor and launches into a rapid fugue for vibraphone and marimbas. The fugue subject itself incorporates the Neapolitan intervallic gesture. Concluding once more on this harmony, the music modulates back to the B section, now with the voice in a higher register, creating a clear contrast to the earlier introspective setting.

The work closes with a full cadence in a broadened ritardando, aligning musical resolution with the text’s final imagery.