Die Menschen

'A murdered victim climbs out of the grave … He travels through the world carrying his head, presented to him by his murderer, seeking atonement as a doppelgänger in place of the murderer until he finds eternal peace.' This is Walter Hasenclever’s summary of the plot for his expressionistic drama Die Menschen. Birth, death, power, oppression, law, murder, fear and loneliness – Detlev Müller-Siemens was drawn to the spareness of the text, which often reveals only a hint of the plot. In his own adaptation, however, he eliminates Hasenclever’s intended theme of redemption and the occasionally theosophical colouring of the work. The music conjures up an atmosphere of permanent violence, both latent and direct, in which events simply occur – non-psychologically, factually, drastically, directly and grotesquely. In contrast, there are phases of repose and peace in which the music primarily develops in a linear and seemingly weightless fashion. The composer characterised his work as a 'vertiginous panopticon in which dreamlike images rush past, burst explosively in the light and sink back into darkness.'