The wellsprings of Christoph Staude’s music are many and varied. His interest in a large number of languages (including those of the Far East) and their systems of symbols has given rise to a wide-ranging nexus of references, as has the backdrop formed by his studies of world literature, cognitive systems, and the sister arts. The works on our CD may serve to shed light on aspects that constitute the defining features of his music. They reveal the emergence of distinctive new traits deriving from Staude’s solid understanding and conscious transformation of currently valid and historically based material, whether of musical or extra-musical origin.