WE/Time/Trembling/Softly

Abstract

The choral body is heterogeneous and homogeneous, it is composed of many parts into one mass - for a time. It emerges, fades away and emerges anew in a different place. It is migratory by nature, forming structures of mutual reinforcement and resonance. It brings knowledge from external spheres into other, even foreign or intimate contexts. And it makes itself heard: many voices become one. Anne Brannys and Edith Kollath take its constitution, its techniques and mechanisms as a starting point for their investigation "WE/Time/Trembling/Softly: Chorus for ten voices out of 173467349034879236587595356416534“, which focuses on the chorus as a form of democratic expression. Different situations are illuminated in which the chorus appears: ancient places of cult, the theater stage, the Thingspiele of the German national socialists, political meetings and demonstrations, current art exhibitions and last but not least the space that is formed between the interacting beings of our environment. On a formal level, the text is structured into ten voices that represent the different aspects of the reflection on the chorus. Each of these voices has its own tempo, its own timbre. One can imagine how these sound one after the other or with each other, how they harmonize, interfere, complement or cancel each other, how a chorus shapes itself in each reader.