Weariness heals wounds I

Beschreibung
"To begin with there is the sense of not wanting to take part. “I would prefer not to”, says Hermann Melville’s enigmatic literary creation Bartelby in his office. Bartelby offers no reason for his radical refusal. Today, young Japanese world-deniers, the so-called Hikikomori, often lock themselves in their children’s room for years. I feel very close to them, because “it’s so beautiful to rummage around in free time” [as the cabaret poet Fred Endrikat had it], which, however, is no longer granted to us. The opposite world to hyperactivity and its close relative multitasking, a creature that makes itself feel guilty of its lethargy. There are more and more followers of this creature, for as the philosopher Byung-Chul Han says: “We owe the cultural achievements of mankind to a deep attentive contemplation”. Boredom is thus a fundamental prerequisite for listening to stories. “If sleep is the peak of bodily relaxation, so boredom is its spiritual peak. Boredom is the dream-bird that hatches the egg of experience.” My cycle Weariness heals Wounds, which begins with this solo piece, is my reaction to the pressure which arises out of the decay of work and free time faced with the background of new media and of past experience (“addio bel passato”). To Walter Benjamin, the construction of a dialectical image is incorporated in the material of the past, and finds its place in the representation of the idea. He sees salvation in recognition as a messianic moment of central importance. He calls this saving memory mindfulness. For me, this thought was the starting-point of my cycle of chamber pieces. What concerns me is this social taboo, the impossibility of a contemplative pause in the hamster-wheel of productivity and performance. Because as a composer of this type of “classical contemporary music”, and all the more as an independent composer, one is continually confronted with various strategic considerations as to how to reach the largest possible audience. This music is indeed somewhat difficult, but its very difficulty has a value. My title refers to an extract from Kafka’s ‘Prometheus’: “According to the fourth [legend], everyone grew weary of what had become meaningless. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.” Kafka wrote four different versions of ‘Prometheus’, in order to thrust the act of interpretation into the foreground. Thus it becomes a parable on the text itself, and not on any single and indivisible truth. In this chamber cycle, my concern is to make aimlessness into a principle – after a time of hyperactivity. Going for a stroll on the paper. A musical Jakob von Gunten, as an alternative plan to the spirit of his age and ours, because the hero of Robert Walser’s novel has only one thing in mind – to founder, to refuse to obey, and to give way to his dreams. “Weariness heals Wounds” is the start of an ‘addiology’, a sort of farewell."
Olga Neuwirth, Werkkommentar, Ricordi Berlin (2013), abgerufen am 24.06.2021 [https://www.ricordi.com/de-DE/Catalogue.aspx/details/442408]

Auftrag: mit Unterstützung der Fondation Hoffmann (Schweiz) - Festival d’Automne à Paris (Frankreich), Wigmore Hall London (Großbritannien)

Widmung: für Antoine Tamestit, in memoriam Michael Glawogger

Uraufführung
06. November 2014 - Paris (Frankreich)
Veranstalter: Festival d’Automne à Paris

Aufnahme
Titel: OLGA NEUWIRTH: Solo
Label: KAIROS (0015097KAI)
Datum: 2021
Mitwirkende: Dimitrios Polisoidis (Viola)

Titel: Weariness heals wounds I (2014)
Plattform: YouTube
Herausgeber: Dimitrios Polisoidis – Thema
Datum: 07.01.2021
Mitwirkende: Dimitrios Polisoidis (Viola)
Weitere Informationen: KAIROS