DELETE [sic!]

for voice and ensemble (2021), 20 min.

Libretto

First performance: MENSCHLICHKEIT. DAS GRÜNE FESTIVAL #1
03.09.21 – 18:00 Uhr, Christuskirche Hannover
musica assoluta, Thorsten Encke
voice: Lini Gong

Libretto by Andreas Karl

Our starting point was the following thought: Being human means to remember, to have memory – individual and cultural memory; this also includes forgetting. Remembering and memory are processes, not constants. Forgetting is even necessary, the question is how much forgetting we and our society needs. When does this forgetting, individual or socially, crosses the boundaries of morality? Besides this, our memories are not safe from us either. Over time and due to many different influences, they got mixed up with desires, maybe even with lies. A part of our life is invented by ourselves, some parts by others: memories, implanted by media, censored by manipulative dictatorships. Based on this premise, let us ask again: What if we couldn’t forget? Total availability of the past could significantly change the way we look at ourselves. Still, to forget what you have experienced yourself is different from never having experienced something. A remnant always remains, albeit deeply hidden and greatly distorted over time. What remains of most tragedies are just some notes somewhere. In some cases, just numbers.
The events of the past two years have left their mark. We now have locked our thoughts on memory up; the analogy to the virus isolation is obvious. We have experienced new kinds of forgetting, those that go far beyond the individual forgetting of everyday life. In our perspective and in this piece, there are no boundaries between the private and the political.
What you are about to hear is imperfect and fragmentary. It doesn’t exist without you. It activates these remnants and memories mentioned above and opens up spaces for one’s own. The music resists forgetting. A memory captured in music – against the infiltration of false ideas, against fading and decay. It is outcry and anger in the face of deleted truths and actively controlled and organized forgetting. It complements the notes that are stored somewhere to full story again.
The note-like text of the piece is taken from reality. The references that are fetched there are from the next room or the neighboring apartment, from the newspaper or the news app, and those remnants of memories mentioned above. The text is sometimes soberly calm and observant, like emotions that are only faintly remembered. But the music knows better – the truth behind the sober words. The music provokes, fights to prevent the erasure, the disintegration into the fragmentary. Delete [sic!] remains a protest as long as we can remember that we have forgotten. There is a fever growing in this piece, as if it would be a great orchestral outcry hold back only by the number of its instruments. It glows multilayered to the outside as it does on the inside.
Ying Wang, Andreas Karl