Sun 3.6. 19.30 ORANGERIE
SCENES TO MUSIC BY JOHN CAGE AND DOMENICO SCARLATTI
Henry David Thoreau stated: “That government is best which governs least” in his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience in 1849. The radical attitude articulated in this statement rejecting any type of patronisation made him into one of John Cage’s most significant role models. Cage even went to the extreme of rejecting musical notation and the order of letters in the alphabet as an infringement of liberty.
His Songbooks published in 1970 contain a collection of 90 pieces for solo voice which can be compiled at will, performed in a random order and even sung simultaneously. This vocal theatre is confronted by a similarly radical work composed two centuries previously: the Stabat Mater by Domenico Scarlatti. The Italian composer abandons the convention of two juxtaposed blocks of five-voice choirs in favour of a constantly fluctuating alternation between different combinations of voices: he creates homophonic resting points and chordal tonal layering and impresses with arioso solo sections and the magnificent unfolding of his choral writing.
Walter Nußbaum Musical Director
Ludger Engels Staging
