Hear Us When We Call. A Séance for Heinrich Schütz

EXPERIMENT I | With works by the master and a world premiere by Laura Steenberge (*1981)

"Early music" - for many still a provocative term. "You have to know so much to play this music!" - you often hear this when discussing the repertoire between 1600 and 1750 with so-called "modern" musicians. Yet "knowledge" in the face of an enormous body of divergent sources is fundamentally impossible; the myth persists nonetheless.

THE PRESENT embarks as a detective on an experiment and makes contact with the past. The Italian Madrigals SWV 1-19 and a world premiere by American composer Laura Steenberge serve as a vehicle to question Heinrich Schütz directly about his creative work.

With a wink, the artist in residence poses questions at the start of the music festival: Will it be possible to make contact with Heinrich Schütz? Will the composer answer the ghost telephone?