Sound Image and Organic Form

Regen-Kanon (Rain Canon) is the fourth of six pieces or sound images in the orchestral cycle Sphären, composed by York Höller between 2001 and 2006. For this work Höller was presented with the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition given by the University of Louisville and became the first German composer to receive the prestigious prize. Inspired by love and nature, Sphären is also influenced by the ideas of the philosophers Empedocles, Henri Bergson, and Peter Sloterdijk. The analytical approach presented in this publication proposes a link in which the musical discourse in Regen-Kanon is approached under the perspective of Empedocles six basic entities (love, strife, water, air, earth and fire), Sloterdijk s explorations of the sphaira as a self-contained whole and all-encompassing totality, Bergson s concept of the aggregate image, and Höller s realization of the Gestalt as an organic form.