Description
What impulses do works of contemporary music provide for a current historiography of today’s plural societies? This question will be examined on the basis of Mediterranean Voices by Neue Vocalsolisten (Stuttgart 2014) and its relations to the historiography of the Mediterranean, for which the interplay between plurality and unity is central.
The ‘video-concert architecture about twelve identities in the Mediterranean’ consists of works by contemporary composers with connections to different Mediterranean countries, each of which was travelled to with a singer in advance. The resulting compositions address history by drawing on ancient mythologies, religious origins, personal memories, migration stories or political events. Although very different, they intersect through quotations of classic European repertoire, through the intertwining of different languages or through emotional-physical sound effects in dream-like or traumatic contexts. Furthermore, the geography of the Mediterranean region is an important theme, which is expressed through aerial sounds and reverberant caves. Taken together, the individual pieces charge landscapes, communities, individuals and experiences with multiple historical perspectives against the background of which migration biographies or diaspora experiences stand out as the driving force behind plural historical-theoretical concepts.
In the lecture, the overarching connections mentioned above will be read on the basis of David Abufiala's, Jacques Rancière's and Leyla Dakhli's critique of Braudel's Mediterranean study. They not only emphasize the particular proximity and distance of the different Mediterranean societies and thus the processes of exchange, but also reflect on the many European projections with which the Mediterranean region is imbued. Rancière, finally, sees Braudel's approach of geographisation as a poetics that integrates unheard voices into historical narratives. In relation to this, Mediterranean Voices positions itself as a hybrid on the edge between inside and outside perspectives, resulting in new crossovers of central parameters of Mediterranean history and thus also increasing the inner plurality of historiography.
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