JCself

A flock of starlings in the evening sky. Thousands of birds, no leader, no plan. Each bird pays attention only to its nearest neighbours, and yet shapes arise that are constantly transforming. In this way chance turns into a pattern.

JCself follows the principle of self-organisation. At first it chooses notes at random. Every note that has sounded once becomes more likely afterwards. A centre of gravity emerges that nobody determined.

The physicist Hermann Haken coined the term synergetics for this: out of many disordered parts an order parameter emerges, which then governs all the other parts. In JCself this is the most frequent note. Duration, loudness, spatial position and secondary voices of all other notes follow it.

Flocks of birds, footpaths across a meadow, ant trails and river courses form by the same principle, and evolution too works with chance, selection and memory. The composer only sets the frame: range, tempo, instruments. Within that frame the music composes itself, and differently every time – and since autumn 2026 it also shapes its own form: regions fade, phases tip, phrases breathe, a listener listens along, and on request a text sets the course with its sentences. In the ensemble the music even seeks its own line-up: JCself sets the fields, those that carry stay, and within the piece they come and go. And every note finds its timbre in the Klangraum – the way it finds its pitch.