PLEADING FOR WORDS

4^th of April 2011, Premiere, opening of the 26th Slovenian Music Days in Piran, Slovenia
^17th of May 2011, New Music Theatre Festival Choregie, Maribor

Karmina Šilec, conductor

Performing:

Carmina Slovenica
Jožef Ropoša, Interpreter of the poetry
Tomaž Sevšek, organ

Author of the project and conductor:  Karmina Šilec

Since time immemorial, music, especially singing, and the word have served to create a connection with the gods, with spiritual worlds. Pleading for Words is a special architecture of music and the word that outwardly expresses contact between very different aesthetic criteria but glows with the same devout message: a personal spiritual testimony.

The program concept is based on the attitude toward primary spirituality: from intimate thought to more outwardly expressed manifestations. Slovenian spiritual creativity can be summed up in threefold diversity: confessional, agnostic, and atheist. These works express categories of the incomprehensible, irrational, mystic, and metaphysical. Mysticism is connected with transcendence. This involves a personal testimony about spirituality and a direct reflection of the spiritual world.

This juxtaposition of Slovenian early music and Slovenian poetry and music of the twentieth century produces a moving confrontation, contemplation, and spiritual experience. Music by the composers Georgius Prenner, Daniel Lagkhner, and Lojze Lebič and the poetry of Srečko Kosovel, Gregor Strniša, Milan Jesih, France Balantič, Dane Zajc, Edvard Kocbek, France Forstnerič,Tomaž Šalamun, Alojz Gradnik, and Cene Vipotnik have convergences in the spiritual, which works timelessly, eternally, and openly.