Memoria

memoria was written in memory of Carla Henius, a dear friend and patron of mine. The music in this work is therefore first and foremost is a personal response to the disappearance of a person from their material environment and, above all, the helplessness I feel because of her sudden unavailability. On the other hand, it is a musical image of the recovery of shapes from the past through memory, a memory which, in the course of time, determines the nature and the meaning of its owner, just as Walter Benjamin compellingly described it in his letter ‘Agesilaus Santander’:

“He (the angel), who has claws and pointed, no razor-sharp wings, does not show any intention to descend upon the person who has had a vision. He looks at him for a long time, then retreats, in jolts, but inexorably. Why? He does it in order to draw him along on that path into the future along which he came. He knows it so well that he strides along without turning round or letting him who he has chosen out of sight. He wants happiness: the conflict that lies in the rapture of the unique, the new, the life yet unlived, and the bliss of things experienced for a second time, of recovery, of the life left behind. The homeward path offers therefore the only hope in finding new life and he takes another one with him on this journey. Like me: as soon as I set eyes on you I led you back to from where I came.”

Representing the ‘object’ of concrete recognition in music, the fragment of a song for the Virgin Mary by Hildegard of Bingen can be heard in the distance, performed by the late Barbara Thornton at the Romanesque Summer Music Festival in Cologne in 1997.

© Johannes Kalitzke (Translation: Andreas Goebel)