Just an Accident?

A Cold War document, based on a text by American journalist and writer Alan Levy. Levy became an eyewitness and chronicler of the Prague Spring. In 1971, the communist regime of the then Czechoslovakia discovered the author's notes describing the situation at the time, and he and his family were expelled. In Just an Accident? Levy erects a monument to this time and his personal experiences. For the composer René Staar, the artist as a metaphor for being human was a main aspect of this work. The artist and the surprising sudden death, the randomness and absurdity of the events were for him the driving force to write this work. In the final version for large orchestra, jazz combo, soprano and speaker, the dramatic piece seeks intermediate tones between the immediate event and the aura of the personality of those artists who have been and still are victims of violence and the mills of history. As the musicologist Matthias Schmidt, who lives in Basel, puts it: "An eloquent speechlessness speaks from every line of a work whose real subject is the question mark that concludes the title of the composition." Written between 1983 and 1985, this piece seems to be more topical than ever in the light of today's events. 

Recipient of the Ernst Krenek Prize of the City of Vienna 1986