tenet opera rotas

Karlheinz Essl und Wolfgang Kogert: ORGANO/LOGICS (Rainer Nonnenmann)
in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 1/2024, S. 76

Essls Schaffen hat einen starken Bezug zur dodekaphonen Kontrapunktik Anton von Weberns, über den der studierte Musikwissenschaftler 1991 seine Dissertation veröffentlichte. Wie jener nutzt Essl in tenet opera rotas dasselbe Palindrom «sator arepo» für vor- und rückläufige Ton-und Akkordfolgen.

Karlheinz Essl's TENET OPERA ROTAS (Willyn Whiting)
in: Listening Vlogs, 4 Mar 2026

The piece today is "tenet opera rotas" by Karlheinz Essl, an organ piece which he wrote in 2020 for Pier Damiano Peretti. These people are both Viennese musicians. Karlheinz Essl teaches composition at the University of Performing Arts Vienna and Pier Damiano Peretti is his colleague there in organ performance. He gave a talk at the conference "Enharmonic Interfaces and Controllers for Keyboard Instruments" I was at in December 2025 in Vienna.

Peretti is really interested in contemporary music. He has performed a lot of contemporary repertoire, many organ pieces by composers which have been featured on this channel. This piece in particular was commissioned by him and it's also marking the 75th anniversary of the death of composer Anton Webern, who died in 1945.

The title is obviously based off of the magic square Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas. And that was something which Webern used in his music. One interesting thing about Essl's piece is that it's a palindrome.

I really enjoyed listening to this, it has really interesting use of sound and versus silence. And also the sections are very distinct. It has a really interesting clear form that can be perceived. Also the sections are different instrumentations of the organ you could say.

So we have three staves, just the swell and the pedal in the T sections.
The N section has six staves and is very dense with material.
And then the E sections are just the manuals for just two hand.

Interesting the use of tempo too. My favorite part was this ritardando in the end section when we first get the quarter notes coming in. A really nice heavy moment of climax right in the middle of the piece.

Updated: 27 Mar 2026