Event

At the same time, and throughout history, the stars have been a source of inspiration for the human imagination, for spiritual experience, and for the concept of the infinite and the unattainable – and thus symbols of the superhuman or the divine. Through Arnold Schoenberg’s sense of the "air of other planets" (Stefan George) with his ears (!), the 20th century began in music as a synesthetic evocation and a poetic-imaginative foreshadowing of new worlds and a new cosmos; yet soon, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, wave theory, statistics, and big data would also significantly shape artistic concepts and speculations.

"Star Constellation: Human" IV to VI is the continuation of a six-part series of events on the theme of musical cosmology, which would be only incompletely described as "concerts." The two ensembles of the KlangForum Heidelberg, the SCHOLA HEIDELBERG and the ensemble aisthesis, under the direction of Walter Nußbaum, demonstrate the close connection between vocal and instrumental sound production, as well as the integration of spatial sonority and visual representation, for both the eyes and ears. A connection of intangible, poetically speaking, "supernatural" relationships – this is what the " Star Constellation: Human" project stands for.

KlangForum Heidelberg is commissioning works from renowned composers of international standing for the continuation of the concert series "STar Constellation: Human"; it is precisely the unique setting of this series that allows them to artistically explore astronomical and cosmic questions and phenomena beyond the limitations of traditional concert stages. For the fourth part of the "Sternbild: Mensch" concert series, Johannes Schöllhorn (professor of composition in Freiburg), Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf of Mannheim (now a professor at the Leipzig University of Music), and the Austrian composer Klaus Lang have composed works commissioned specifically for the series, all of which are connected to the cosmos. Lang, for instance, takes the view that music is time made audible, which – in light of the cosmos and the metaphorical, figurative disappearance of time and the past in the stars – is an acoustically compelling approach. In his composition, Schöllhorn explores the (only apparent) contrast between "light” and “dark," which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be a flow. Three short text excerpts from the beginning of Sor Juana’s "primero sueño" serve as the basis for this. In Mahnkopf’s composition, the astrophysical moment dominates: scientific texts are rephrased; background noise, black holes, and ekpyrosis represent only a small selection of the topics addressed.