However essential as a working process, any sound manipulation always remains at the service of the substantive trajectory George De Decker wants to follow as a composer. A key work in his oeuvre is SCHWEIGEMINUTE (2009), written at a time when he was faced with the death of several close acquaintances.

Caspar David Friedrich's painting Der Mönch am Meer (1808) set the creation process in motion. De Decker imagined what the lonely character would see if he turned around: a deserted beach as a counterpart of the sea, an empty plain, a landscape in which memories of the dearly departed are snowed under. A contemplative image, which naturally made him think of the old custom of holding a minute's silence in homage to the dead. In the German word Schweigeminute (taken from Siegfried Lenz's 2008 novella), he found a more appropriate translation for that sentiment: ‘silence’ is more active and inward-looking than silence - what is passive indicates ‘outward’ absence of sound. The monk by the sea silences himself when he thinks of his dear dead, his Schweigeminute is spontaneous - very different from the obligatory ‘minute of silence’ demanded at a memorial (one minute of not speaking).

That's how important a title is. Because even with language, timbre has a meaning: the flag must cover the load. Once he has the right title for a work, he can get to work - a process comparable to a poet having to find a first line of verse, a sentence that generates all subsequent lines.

De Decker eventually wrote SCHWEIGEMINUTE, a commission from the Emanon Ensemble, from the concept of ‘rain’ - when you are standing with a group of people in silence around a tombstone and it is raining softly, that ‘side-stepping’ rain just underlines that silence. De Decker composed the work for tape, clarinet, violin, piano and cello.

Adding a personal dimension to this artistic endeavor, the cover art for the album has been designed by De Decker himself, enhancing the overall aesthetic experience.