Moritz Eggert studied piano and composition in Munich, Frankfurt, and London. As a pianist he regularly collaborates with many artists, as soloist with orchestra, as chamber music partner in various formations and as a Lied accompanist.

His concert-length cycle for piano solo, Haemmerklavier, is among his best known works and has been performed around the world. Moritz Eggert has covered all genres in his work -- his oeuvre includes 9 operas as well as ballets and works for dance and music theatre, often with unusual performance elements. His last opera, The Snail, was performed in Mannheim. His large "soccer oratorio" for the Ruhrtriennale 2005 and the Soccer World Championship in Germany 2006 experienced widespread media coverage in German as well as foreign media. Eggert created the opening ceremony for the FIFA World Cup 2006. Among his latest works are the operas The Snail and Freax.

With Sandeep Bhagwati, Moritz Eggert founded a festival of new music in 1991, the A*Devantgarde festival for new music, whose 9th edition has been held in june 2007 in Munich.

Skelter
For saxophone quartet (2 altos, 2 baritones)

Remembered music is different from experienced music: sometimes several passages become one single collage in memory, sometimes only a general « sound » is remembered, without any details.

Skelter is a composed remembering of the song Helter Skelter from the famous " white album "   of the Beatles. It is not an attempt to recreate the song - the chosen ensemble already forbids this. It is rather as if certain single elements of the song, like some notes of a guitar solo, gain their own, independent life, already transformed through my, sometimes deliberately false, memory of the song. These elements are much more important than, for example, the melody of Helter Skelter.

In the original there is a very hidden use of the saxophone, like sounding out of another world. In Skelter this imaginary saxophone becomes the main instrument, quadrupled as a quartet. The complex multiphonics used in my piece hint to another, altogether different world again.

In the original song there is also a famous fade-out, and then a fade-in that brings back the music after an unusually long pause. In Skelter only the notes themselves disappear, but the rhythm of the music continues in the mechanical noises of the saxophone keys. If my piece wants to show something it is the impossibility of memory - because to live a moment is to transform it through your own perspective.

Memory is much more about one self than the object of memory.

M.E.