La petite mort

Claus Kühnl's work "La petite mort" is a piece of music theater. But "La petite mort" does not necessarily need a stage to be effective. The staging of the richly illustrative music takes place in the listener's head. "La petite mort": that is a view of the world as of the inner life of the psyche, a reflection of the soul in surprisingly lovely sounds, the result, putting the listener in a contemplative mood, of an introspective phase in the life of the composer, who at the time the work was written said that he was in the process of withdrawing into silence. Kühnl sees in his concept of music theater the antithesis of opera. He does not conceive it as continuous action with dialogue set to music, but rather as the creation of sign of all kinds. Kühnl's music theater must be a feast for eyes and ears, a mystical experience, affecting the senses directly, without having to make a detour via the analytical mind. The word plays a secondary role here. Text is sound, words are notes, the voice an instrument treated on an equal basis with the instruments of the orchestra, not dominating them.