Severin Dornier: An[other] Alpine Symphony

The predictions are coming true, and the last years of the great Alpine glaciers are long gone. At a former research station, seven glaciologists examine the remains of the once eternal ice that have been salvaged and artificially kept alive. Surprisingly, however, the expedition members come across musical finds from earlier times, which–previously locked in the ice and now made to resound–evoke the mystical past of the glacier in all its power.

An[other] Alpine Symphony is a re-composition and poetry setting in one and contrasts the romantic understanding of nature of the 19th century with the scientific realities of our future. Just like the natural symbolism of the musical model, the Rhaeto-Romanic poetry of the Swiss writer Leta Semadeni shows how the glacier world of the Swiss Alps is not only an endangered natural region, but also a rich cultural area closely linked to it. An[ohter] Alpine Symophny is an attempt to give nature a language even in today’s world with its changed framework conditions.

»As gigantic, silent witnesses to a primeval past, glaciers embody a part of the earth’s history. […] Like volcanoes and rock strata, they are among the natural phenomena that most directly recall Genesis […]. The unproven expression «glacier tongue” could […] be imagined as the organ of a utopian primordial language.” (Paul Celan)

Severin Dornier