In the nineties, a highly virtuous glass harp trio from the Mimenschule Ilg Zurich gave regular concerts. Since their repertoire consisted only of well-known 18thcentury ute clock pieces and all kinds of short arrangements, the three players asked for a larger work in several movements - and preferably on Rilke's well-known Book of Hours poem 'I live my life'. But how should I set such an enormous poem to music for delicate glass harp sounds? I had the following idea: Let's assume that this poem by Rilke was lost and only individual fragments still exist. So I set these fragments to music in random order.
I put the fragment 'about God, about the ancient tower' in the centre.
In this movement we hear the only low tones in the whole work; they are produced by bottles. The different pitches are produced, as with the glasses, by the amount of water poured into the bottles. While the glasses are sounded by carefully circling the rim with wet ngers, the bottles are blown like a transverse ute. I dedicated 'In growing rings' to the three glass harp players Annemarie Mörgeli, Els Ilg and Pius Brogle.
