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Reflektionen III
on a speech by Angela Merkel

This work was created for the Audioplay Competition of the Leipzig Summer of Audioplays in 2006, the subject given was „Great Gestures”.

Heads of state ever again use the turn of the year to address the people and put themselves in good perspective. Gernany's first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, made no exception to that habit.

New Year speeches live on good resolutions, called „ideas” here, and on a feeling of togetherness they are to induce.

New ideas aren't necessarily and automatically good, though, and togetherness should at least from time to time be checked for its basis.
To throw a light behind the nice words and look for what is left unsaid is my artistic and also satirical concern.

Angela Merkel's speech provides a formal framework for my reflections, it can be heard literally only at selected points „spoken” by a computer voice. Loose translations and comments are taken from radio and TV commercials.
Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstances, op. 39, Nr. 1, serves as a kind of ground coat or thoroughbass.

Politicians must bear to be criticized, satire does that with grim amusement; in the end I wanted to take Frau Merkel at her word – at least with regard to her sentences about humanity and togetherness – as a conciliatory gesture, so to speak. Yet, to turn all our lives to the better we surely will need more than that . . .


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