Helmut Lachenmann: GOT LOST

The fact that the title of his almost 30-minute vocal piece was associated with »gottlos« (godless), inspired Helmut Lachenmann, the son of a family of pastors. The search for an ultimate, all-encompassing and transcendental truth remains fruitless here – possibly because the texts set to music are rather too heterogeneous. A quatrain from Friedrich Nietzsche’s »Die fröhliche Wissenschaft« (The Gay Science), a nonsense poem by Fernando Pessoa, and a want ad for a lost laundry basket – where is the connection? Whether philosophical, poetic or incidental, Lachenmann subjects language to a torture of phrasing techniques, sends it through a ragged obstacle course of intervals, sound colours and dynamic contrasts, until the meaning of the words – quite playfully – is lost underfoot. The process of hearing becomes the subject, as language is transformed into music.