Ensemble: chamber choir or four voices, string quartet
Duration: 25’
Year of completion: 2019
Text: Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet, Paul Thymich, Psalm 102
Premiere: April 28, 2019. Kruppa String Quartet, Roberta Szklenár (soprano), Viola Thurnay (alto), József Csapó (tenor), Dömötör Pintér (bass), cond.: Marcell Dénes-Worowski. Gödöllő, Premontrei Auditórium.
Note:
The basis of the libretto comes from a 1977 volume, entitled Dialogues by Gilles Deleuze, the French philosopher and aesthetician that contains Deleuze’s conversations with Claire Parnet. Moreover, short fragments by Paul Thymich and Psalm 102 also appear in the script. Even though Dialogues was published in 1977, it is still highly relevant, since the phenomena and processes addressed by them are becoming more and more acute. The omnipresent nature of the internet, consumer society, the revolutionary discoveries in the fields of informatics and biology – all these lead to the crisis, perhaps the end of the humanist worldview. Boundaries are getting blurred between humans and animals, humans and machines, men and women. Concepts believed to be stable are being questioned, binary oppositions are becoming obsolete, gradualness and pluralism is foregrounded. The thousands years old teleological nature of Western thinking having its roots in Christianity is replaced by a worldview of permanent changes and transformations.
The faint sense of tonality at the beginning of the piece takes the listener into a sphere of a slipping, dissolving world giving one the opportunity to ask questions that arise when being torn between two worlds. Whether the preceding ideas, feelings, concepts, artworks have become irrelevant? Have they lost their power? I invite the listener to reflect on these questions. (Kecskés D.)