Event

Alice Belugou, harpist at KlangForum Heidelberg, presents herself in the "KlangForum - solo!" series alongside her duo partner and the "ZUNGE" ("Tongue") project. She writes:

ZUNGE, a concert featuring three world premieres, explores the question of communication through multilingualism and the connection between language and personality. We are native speakers of French and Italian, respectively, and live and work in German-speaking Switzerland. Although our mode of communication is based on French, it is strongly influenced by Italian, German, and English. While globalization encourages language mixing, Switzerland remains one of the most emblematic countries of multilingualism.

In ZUNGE, we will explore a pathological linguistic condition in which communication no longer serves understanding but instead obscures meaning. We were inspired by Ferenc Karinthy’s novel Épépé, in which Budai, a brilliant linguist, immerses himself in a universe whose language is unknown to him. His efforts to learn it are in vain, for this ever-changing tool of communication has no tangible logic. Nicolas von Ritter wants to use the idea of language as a means of confusion and write a musical theater piece that plays with false friends between French and Italian, featuring an interviewer and an interviewee who believe they are misunderstanding each other. His play promises funny and confusing moments.

Anyone who speaks several languages fluently knows that different aspects of one’s personality or different moments in life can be associated with one language or another (Estelle, for example, counts numbers in French but the currency in Italian). To what extent does multilingualism foster a form of personality fragmentation? The second text that fueled our reflections is Hermann Hesse’s "Steppenwolf", and in particular the text’s conclusion, which takes place in the Magic Theater. The author, a naturalized Swiss citizen, portrays a character with a split personality – Harry Haller / Steppenwolf. Upon entering the magic theater, the protagonist’s personality is no longer split in two, but fragmented into a multitude of units. This form of schizophrenia, the unhealthy state of the ego’s unity, mirrors the unhealthy state of language as a tool of misunderstanding.

The Chinese composer Huihui Cheng, who lives in France, and the Serbian composer Nemanja Radivojevic, who lives in Bern, will each compose a piece for harp and voice based on the Hessian text.