When composing, we often hear comments like, “This piece sounds like a specific artist,” or conversely, “This piece does not sound like a specific artist.” But what exactly makes an artist distinctive?

This set of four pieces began with that very question.

Just as in contemporary visual art, dance, or film, every composer has their own unique way of composing—how they begin, how they end, and what elements they choose along the way. Even in selecting a single note or an instrument, whether intentional or not, a composer’s subjectivity and choices inevitably come into play.

Like any other artist, a composer makes decisions in every moment of notation. Each decision incorporates the composer’s choice, and no piece of music is ever free from these choices. When Mondrian painted Composition, he focused on structural beauty, yet the decision to use red, blue, and yellow was ultimately a product of his own subjectivity.

Paradoxically, in this work, I attempted to explore my own artistic identity by minimizing my presence as much as possible.

Unlike my previous compositions, this piece was created based on predetermined structures and sequences, where almost all musical elements—including pitch, rhythm, and register—were already set in place. To further minimize variables and choices, I restricted the instrumentation to a solo piano format, reducing my intervention as much as possible.

Each movement follows a distinct structure:

1. Gold

2. Klangstudie

3. Spirale

4. Pi

Within each structure, only a minimal degree of my own choices were introduced. Let’s explore how I interpreted these structural aesthetics together.