About the creation

Erasure is a kind of extended lied for unaccompanied violin, in four alternating moods. Its main intent is to depict four entities as they pass away from this world - yet retain a kind of blurred existence. Even when we willingly erase a being or entity, it does not exactly disappear; there are always faint traces, engraved memories. The four moods are four segments, each divided in two: a source - and a development-through-fading. In principle, this is a mirror image of conventional musical development - stripping away the material until we are only left with the underlying kernel. The aesthetics and the pitch world in each of the four segments is distinctive, created through a kind of hidden monothematicism. Thus far on the internal trajectory of each movement. The work's overall feeling is that of simultaneous descents in three parameters, flowing in a single continuity which encompasses the entire work: a descent in pitch, from high to low; a large dynamic descent; and a gradual dulling of the violin's timbre. This overall azimuth - a sharp slope, from the highest peak to the lowest abyss - finds us suddenly, thrusting us into an allegorical-philosophical insight on a gradually vanishing world. The work was born to me in August 2009 - out of the necessity of life, in response to a loss within my own personal world. It was composed just a few months before the launch of the twentieth CD dedicated to my works (December 5, 2009), enabling the inclusion of the world-premiere performance within this event. Erasure (op. 69) was composed especially for the violinist Yael Barolsky. Tsippi Fleischer, 2009