Friedrich Goldmann, born in Saxony, lives as a freelance composer in Berlin, but he has also worked in the field of musical education and as a conductor. He was a member of the East German Academy of Arts and has been a professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste since 1991. The works of Friedrich Goldmann selected for this documentary CD were all written between 1988 and 1992. For all their many dissimilarities, they reveal the composer's increasing interest in what might be called contingency in musical composition, i. e. The realization that nothing is necessary, that anything can be accomplished in different ways, and is hence contingent. Goldmann's encounter with this basic problem of modern art has led him to distinguish between two complementary strategies of composition. On the one hand, the composer may systematize the connections between compositional elements (e. g. harmony and rhythm). On the other hand, this same systematization makes it possible for him to isolate the functionally self-contained complex entities thus obtained. Both these strategies - the systematic integration of elements, and the isolation of complexes by making them functionally autonomous - are among the abstract principles and initial axioms of Goldmann's musical language. This abstractivist tinge in Goldmann's cast of thought is counterbalanced by his highly practical bias as a performing musician. For years Goldmann has been an active conductor, and this has affected his approach to composition by granting him not only a capability of rational detachment, but also a highly refined and sophisticated range of expression.