'Stille, nacht' (2011) is a night piece, inspired by the constellated sky and the idea of gathering darkness – darkness of tone, of register, of material. In order to achieve this, the work necessarily starts from a position of relative brightness and proceeds with a ‘taking away’. Therefore, a high, mobile tessitura is the starting point and a bare, low chorale the terminus.

Structurally, the work consists of a number of sections with different titles and functions:

1) Constellation 1
2) Encroachment
3) Constellation 2
4) Crepuscule
5) Constellation 3
6) Veiled nebula
7) Constellation(-less) 4

The recurrent Constellation sections allow the whole structure to have the appearance of a kind of Rondo, although they always return in a changed form.

This piece, like my piano quartet 'Noct', is a re-working of my guitar solo 'Sternlos'.