1965-00-00

"A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"- it seems like a long chain of tautologies. But behind the uniformity one catches sight of a more complicated pattern. The meaning of the words is not the same each time. The chain may be dissolved into two smaller tautological sentences: "a rose is a rose” plus "a rose is a rose", between these sentences there is a word "is" and the whole chain thus makes a superior tautology - "a rose is a rose = a rose is a rose".The former sentence is a statement about a rose, object-language, the latter sentence is, however, a statement about the former, meta-language,the former sentence tells that the world simply exists. The latter sentence tells that this statement about the world simply is, and the whole chain thus becomes a poem of the reality of the language here and now- a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, this semantic complexity of course it will not be possible to arrange in a musical way, neither has this been henning christiansen's intention, it is the tautological great form which has preoccupied him in a musical way, the regular repetition of the elements,it is what gertrude stein called "familiarity" and then it has been natural to use the letters of the text as a paradigm also for the musical development, in this way the work
will at the same time be a homage to a great lady- "a rose to miss stein"

hans-jørgen nielsen