Event

The concert series "Sternbild Mensch" deals with the universe, both with the current state of knowledge in astronomy and with the repercussions that this knowledge has on the human image. Often enough, our sensory imagination is doomed to fail: Whether it concerns spatial distances, temporal durations, temperatures, pressure, gravity, or speed, the number of zeros is overwhelming in every case. Even the exclusive status of planet Earth as the only celestial body to support life has been completely destroyed. Instead, one assumes an almost infinite number of Earth-like planets in space, simply because it is so immeasurably vast.

But doesn't our self-image as humans still rest on the long-disproven geocentric worldview, with the Earth as the center of the universe and humans as the crown of creation? Do our sensory impressions, which are validated on Earth every day, even allow for a different sense of life? We will explore these questions in the final part of the Sternbild concert series.

The text of Hanna Eimermacher's world premiere, Lady of Silence, reflects the vulnerability of Earth dwellers in space:

"I stand in the midst of the dazzling light,"

calmer,

My heart gentle and strong

There is so much light.

There is so much strength.

The SCHOLA HEIDELBERG will be positioned around the audience and will also circle them in individual sections – the parallel to the geocentric worldview is striking. In the German premiere of Michael Pelzel's La Luna, the audience will also be surrounded by the singing voices, but with a clear orientation toward the front, toward the drums. Here, the moon, which gives the title to the piece, is sung of as a witness, who has caught the nightly tears of the whole of human history and thus holds up a mirror to it.

The year of composition of Johannes Ockeghem's Intemerata Dei Mater is unknown, with possible dates ranging from 1450 to 1490. Equally unknown is the author of the text, perhaps it was even the composer himself. At that time, before the Copernican revolution, the geocentric worldview was still intact, and the Virgin Mary was a real entity in the general consciousness, one that could be desperately implored for help. Even if this intensity of Christian faith irritates some of us today, it did bring forth music of exquisite beauty.

Gottfried Michael Koenigs' Funktion Indigo (1969) for four-channel tape is one of the great pioneering achievements of electroacoustic music. We bow with the performance of this work to a sadly little-known grandmaster, who passed away on December 30, 2021, at the age of 95. The exemplary spirit of inquiry that speaks from his music does honor to the constellation of humanity.

The program concludes with the well-known evening song "Der Mond ist aufgegangen" ("the moon has risen") Matthias Claudius combines Christian humility with a curious wonder about scientific knowledge in his poem: The third stanza

"Do you see the moon standing there,"

he is only half visible

and yet it is round and beautiful.

So are some things, I suppose.

that we can safely laugh at,

because our eyes do not see them."

may not refer to the half-moon, but rather to the fact that the moon always shows us the same side, meaning that its orbit around the Earth is a synchronous rotation.

Humanity has discovered countless things since Claudius' lifetime that our eyes cannot see. It remains an open question how humanity will deal with it. A new concert series "Star Constellation: Human," let's say in 2030, would already provide contributions that are completely beyond today's imagination.