sprachlos
for string quartet and 3 dancers [2000/2001]
[first performed Folkwang Hochschule Essen, Germany, 10 March 2001]
by Sven Hermann [composition] and Felix Bürkle [choreography]

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basic idea:

"sprachlos" [speechless] is a piece about the limitaions of man. Craving to grasp something and to express it in words, one meets with the limitations of speech. There are things inexpressible, where words fail, inspite of all struggling. The desire to break out into those realms beyond physicality.

musical idea:

The musical material consists of the first two bars of the "Lacrimosa" in W.A. Mozart's requiem and the sentence "Yes, I was gonna say something." The processing methods employed are: granulation - different readings of the basic material are broken up into pieces and then recombined - and fluctuation - the same pattern of movement is taking place simultaneously in different tempi.

choreographic idea:

The basic material for the choreography is a phrase of movement created from the idea of speechlessness. The equivalent of wanting-to-say-something is the impulse to move away from where you are, the attempt to break out. Similar to the musical material, the choreographic material was created from the initial phrase by granulation and subsequent recombination using different tempi.

Because music and choreography both stem from the same idea, express it according to their respective nature and use the same principles of developing the basic material, a unity of music and choreography was created in which each element retains its independent characteristics.

"sprachlos" was created in close cooperation between Felix Bürkle and Sven Hermann.
[f.b./s.h.]

participants in first performance:

dancers:
Katharina Nieradzik, Reinaldo Borges dos Santos, Davide de Robertis

music recording:
Annex String Quartet, London [Hilary Sturt 1. violin, Gordon Mackay 2. violin, Bridget Carey viola, Anton Lukoszevieze violoncello]
recorded 27 February 2001 [LMC Sound London]

sound engineer:
Mick Ritchie