Andreas Skouras Weiß Fragmenta Missarum Pro Defunctis, Sonate Über Die Dunkelheit (2009)

Bavarian-born composer Michael Bastian Weiß has studied both music and philosophy, and his notes to the two-movement Fragmenta Missarum pro Defunctis (Fragments of a Mass for the Dead) – although not, curiously, for the other work on the disc, the Sonate über die Dunkelheit (Simphonie Nr. 2) – have a philosophical orientation. The Fragmenta Missarum, he said, apply "a topos of recent musical history, namely working with stillness," to the problem of "reacting to a historical disaster that caused considerable pain to countless people." The work was composed in 2000, and this presumably refers to the Holocaust.