Event

The central figure of the event is the poet and graphic artist Christoph Meckel, who was born in Berlin in 1935, grew up in Freiburg/Breisgau, and died there in 2020. Latest music, but also musical settings of Romantic poetry, are thematized and contextualized in a through-composed concert form. Bodo Primus' reading from Meckel's work:
The world premiere of a commissioned work by composer Kathrin A. Denner (*1986), trained in Freiburg and Karlsruhe, for SCHOLA HEIDELBERG and ensemble aisthesis, echoes Meckel's language; other works in the program are biographically, literarily, and atmospherically connected to the history of Baden and Württemberg, the common thread of this year's BW Literature Summer.

"I didn't invent summer at the table /
and certainly not on a typewriter /
I carried it with me for weeks /
and thought about completely different things ..."
("Love Poem," 1975)

"Ich habe den Sommer nicht am Tisch erfunden /
und bestimmt nicht auf einer Schreibmaschine /
ich habe ihn wochenlang mit mir herumgetragen /
und dabei an ganz andere Sachen gedacht ..."
("Liebesgedicht", 1975)

The KlangForum Heidelberg is also less concerned with the summer of literature in its homage to Meckel than with the remembering power of language itself:
Christoph Meckel, who grew up in Freiburg, experienced the founding period of the country 70 years ago, inscribing and incorporating it into fiction and memory, for example in "Suchbild," "Nachricht an Baratynski," "Der Brand," "Schwarzwälder Sommer," among others; alongside the narrative, his lyrical work (in recitation and musicalization) plays an important role in our event.

"Among the most enduring masterpieces of the poet Christoph Meckel are his memoirs," writes Michael Braun in 2020, and the reference of the summer of literature to the founding of the state of Baden-Württemberg 70 years ago makes particular sense, where the land and its history have become the very material of the literary work itself. Equally obvious and fruitful seems the musical engagement with Christoph Meckel, both on the surface, in the characteristic sound of his language, and in his literary as well as graphically conceived images.

It is no coincidence that Christoph Meckel was awarded the Johann-Peter-Hebel Prize in 2013, and he, long after his time as a "Young Wild" and as a rootless traveler, took this opportunity to acknowledge the close connection between land and (here: Alemannic!) language, as coined by Hebel - very similar to his contemporary, the composer Dieter Schnebel.

The decisive factor is the almost incomprehensible wealth of Meckel's complete works, whose musical treasures have hardly been unearthed. The KlangForum Heidelberg wants to provide inspiration for this, both at its own venue, the Betriebswerk in the City of Literature Heidelberg, and in Christoph Meckel's chosen home of Freiburg - the home whose bombing he experienced as a nine-year-old and later processed in the story "The Fire."