Simultan Krippenspiel

Simultan Krippenspiel – Christmas according to DADA – is an amazing version of the Gospel of Luke by the Swedish composer Pär Olofsson for 12 voices, an instrumental ensemble and pre-recorded sound effects.

This piece is based on a manuscript by Hugo Ball, prepared for his Grand Soirée in the early summer of 1916and held at the Cabaret Voltaire. Astonishingly, one of the acts was a Nativity play: “Simultan Krippenspiel – Concert Bruitiste”. The script consisted of one page of the traditional story of the birth of Christ from theGospel of Luke, while the following page had lines for the familiar characters of Joseph, Mary, the Angel, theShepherds, and so on – in gibberish. Sound and light effects were spelled out onomatopoetically and we reperformed by the actors with their voices or by using props.

Simultan Krippenspiel – Christmas according to DADA, isn’t a clearcut example of Dada; the music moves in a border land between meaninglessness and explanation.Occasionally, the music lends meaning to the nonsensical lines, but it also allows them to remain incomprehensible. The main characters are Joseph, Mary, and the Narrator reciting the Bible. The chorus paints the powerful world of sounds indicated in Ball’s script with their voices. Pre-recorded sounds and percussion provide the means to expand the sound palette and to work with bruitistic elements. The tuba and the strings are used both conventionally and experimentally, thus becoming a few extra, unnamed, characters in the drama.