Event

Man, Become Essential

Here, the liturgy turns toward the world, and humanity turns its gaze back toward heaven. Experience this unusual interplay of classical and contemporary music with our two ensembles.

In this program, the KlangForum opens up several points of connection within Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, Op. 86, and introduces new points of reference. In doing so, it renders the otherwise fixed structure permeable to essential questions of human existence, as they recur from the 20th century onward: Luigi Nono, for example, provokes with the question of whether God might be found in Argentina, and Anton Webern draws a connection between human sight and divine radiance. The music takes on an explicitly mystical quality when several fascinating aphorisms by the Baroque poet Angelus Silesius are set to music in Heinz Holliger’s contemporary composition.

In the unique soundscape – created, for instance, by the use of gut strings, which were still common in Vienna during Webern’s time, as well as the relatively small ensemble – worlds of thought and expression that seem far apart come together.

The event is presented in cooperation with the Beethovenfest Bonn and the SWR Experimental Studio.