The jump - description of an opera

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Opera dates
Title: The jump - description of an opera
Shape: Music theater in five parts
Original language: German
Music: Georg Hajdu
Libretto : Thomas Brasch
Premiere: October 2nd and 3rd, 1999 (concert version)
Place of premiere: Theater im Pumpenhaus , Münster

The jump - description of an opera is a music theater by the composer Georg Hajdu, premiered in concert on October 2 and 3, 1999 in the Theater im Pumpenhaus in Münster, based on a libretto by the writer and filmmaker Thomas Brasch, who died in 2001 .

Basis of the plot of the opera

In 1984 a tragic incident occurred at the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne . A student shot a professor and shot other lecturers. The Viennese journalist Erika Wantoch published an article about this in the Austrian magazine Profil , in which she tried to reconstruct the student's life using testimonies, statements from acquaintances, as well as diary entries and letters. The student showed herself to be a split and torn personality who was perceived and described very differently among friends. As the motive for the act, the student later stated that she wanted to eliminate the lecturers, since after her conversion to Judaism she was of the opinion that non-Jews should not study the Torah . The article describes a young woman who for years became entangled in fantasies and fictions that seemed to be the actual trigger for her deed. On the one hand, the young woman was considered a good student and scientist and, at the request of a lecturer, received funding for highly gifted students. In contrast to this, her appearance in the institute was bossy, loud, provocative and addicted to assertiveness. Her desire to be Jewish began when the student fell in love with the assistant at the Philosophical Seminary, who was himself a Jew. However, he did not return her love. She absolutely wanted to become a Jew, but this was associated with problems, as she could not prove any Jewish ancestors. In 1978 she was finally able to convert to Judaism. The student lived absorbed in her studies and cut off from any relationships that were replaced by fictions. She imagined she was being followed and threatened by everyone in the institute, and in her diary she got lost in a world full of love fantasies. Apparently she could no longer differentiate between reality and her self-built fictional world.

This article by journalist Erika Wantoch about the student's torn personality inspired Georg Hajdu to write an opera about the events. However, it wasn't until 1992 that he thought about a musical reconditioning. The process from the first conception to the world premiere took seven years.

Composition technique

From a musical history point of view, the jump is a late example of computer music . The formal and harmonic structure was derived from a sentence by Thomas Brasch using methods of spectral analysis ( spectral music) and computer-aided composition. The creation process took place in several steps:

  1. Brasch says the sentence “Writing an opera means: knowing no other way out” on Georg Hajdu's answering machine . This sentence lasts 5.4 seconds.
  2. Hajdu creates a waveform display with a WaveLab -like program.
  3. A frequency and time analysis is carried out with the set . There are conspicuous fields in the vowels .
  4. Hajdu stretches the spoken sentence and can use the analysis results to create a progress plan, which then determines the formal course of the opera.
  5. With the help of the calculated data, Hajdu creates a grading scale with eighth-note intervals .
  6. As the last step, Hajdu uses the scale to create the score .

In summary, the development process can be described as follows:

  • a written motto
  • Taking up the motto
  • Frequency and time analysis of the recording
  • formal process derived from the analysis
  • Libretto derived from the formal process
  • Score based on the libretto.

This method of spectral analysis is also often associated with the French composers Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail .

Structure of the opera

The opera consists of five parts:

Hajdu uses two types of material:

  • phonetic material (based on vowels and consonants of the spoken sentence → first and second act) and
  • statistical material (noises from answering machine → prologue, intermezzo, epilogue).

occupation

At the concert premiere in Münster the cast consisted of a speaker, eight singers, three electronic instruments, four woodwinds, six brass instruments, a viola , a cello , two percussionists and a jazz trio.

Plot and structure

The structure of Thomas Brasch's libretto was derived from the statement that Thomas Brasch left on Georg Hajdu's answering machine. In the prologue, the main character is introduced to the eleven-part libretto on an eleven-meter board, from which she can see everyone below and thinks that she has to prove something to a wide variety of people by jumping off this board. In the respective scenes, different perspectives are shown that show something about the incident and about the student. The perspective changes from the main character, to acquaintances and witness statements, and diary entries or thoughts of murder of the main character are shown. However, there is only one speaker who slips into the various roles. In the epilogue the link to the prologue is struck again. The main character's jump from the eleven-meter board is shown as a leap into their doom and not as a grand entrance as she imagines it to be at the beginning.

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