Germany
Integra Commission: AUNG
Resources: Ensemble, Electronics and Theatrical Element
Integra Ensemble: BIT20 (Norway)
Integra Research Centre: NOTAM (Norway)

Programme Note

AUNG is the second joint project by composer Iris ter Schiphorst and librettist and director Helga Utz, who founded oper unterwegs, an opera company dedicated to contemporary opera, three years ago in Vienna. Their first joint project, the children’s opera Die Gänsemagd (“The Goose Girl”), was premiered to great acclaim two years ago in Vienna’s Dschungel as a production of the taschenoper, and subsequently staged in Berlin’s Radialsystem.

Anna Clementi has already premiered numerous works by Iris ter Schiphorst, singing, among other things, the main role in the 3D opera Annas Wake, and in the multi-media opera Silence moves (with which she won the 1997 BLAUE BRÜCKE composition competition); at the end of the 1980s she was the singer in intrors, an ensemble founded by Iris ter Schiphorst that primarily performed electroacoustic compositions.

Dag Henning Kalvoy from the Norwegian studio NOTAM programmed the live-electronics.

The subject is the inhuman conditions under the military government in Burma (Myanmar) against which the West does not see itself able to take action. Human rights organizations accuse the military junta in Burma (Myanmar) of human rights abuses such as forced labor, compulsory evacuation of villages, torture, rape, and the use of child soldiers, as well as indiscriminate arrests and the abuse of prisoners. In spite of abundant natural resources, the population is very poor. Over half of the national budget is spent on the military, the intelligence services, and the police.

Because of the catastrophic situation, the international committee of the Red Cross, which normally only expresses criticism in confidence, decided to take the extraordinary step of publically reproaching the government for serious human rights violations.

The most well-known opposition leaders are the comedian Zarganar, who was banned from working and is currently in prison, and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Historical background: Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, General Aung San, successfully fought for Burma’s independence from English colonial rule, but was assassinated shortly before attaining his goal. He would have become Burma’s first elected president and undoubtedly wanted to establish democracy in Burma. Today’s junta, however, sees in him a representative of their own interests, and claims him as “father.” On the other hand, for Suu he represents the humane world without violence. Thus both sides exploit his memory for their goals. Moreover, it is surely the fact that Suu is the daughter of Bogyoke Aung San, who fought against the British and the Japanese, that has protected her from assassination.

Aung San Suu Kyi received her formal education in India, where her mother, who always upheld the memory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, was active as Burma’s first female ambassador. There Aung San Suu Kyi attended the best schools and became friends with Indira Gandhi and her sons Rajiv and Sanjay. She initially studied political science in Dehli, later philosophy, political and economic science in Oxford. She worked in New York at the UN and, with her husband Michael Aris, a scholar of Tibetan studies, in Bhutan. The couple had two sons. While Aung San Suu Kyi taught and did research in Kyoto and in India – also about recent Burmese history and her father’s role in it – Burma, under the brutal dictator Ne Win, was sealed off from the rest of the world.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s life changed completely when she returned to Burma in 1988 to be with her terminally ill mother – in the midst of political unrest: the people were demonstrating in the streets for democratic reforms. Burma’s “second struggle for independence” (Aung San Suu Kyi) began. As the daughter of her father, the civil-rights activist could not watch indifferently, as she said, and became active politically, and was soon a symbolic figure. In spite of threats of armed force and a ban on public meetings, she traveled throughout the country on an election campaign for the National League for Democracy (NLD), of which she was a cofounder, and dauntlessly advocated civil disobedience. The regime however disregarded her grandiose election victory in the spring of 1990, and arrested, tortured, and killed numerous opposition members; Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. Yet she was not to be silenced so easily. With a ten-day hunger strike, she won the assurance that her fellow campaigners would be well treated in prison. In July 1990, the European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and a year later she received the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” – the world became aware of her fate and of that of her country.

After six years, her confinement was suspended, on strict conditions, for the first time, and she was able to receive foreign journalists. Two years later she was again in custody, which continued until November of last year. She left her two sons behind as adolescents, and never again saw her husband, who died of cancer in 1999.

Biography

Iris ter Schiphorst was born in Hamburg. After completing her piano studies and giving numerous concert performances, she spent two years travelling the world. Back in Germany, she took up theatre studies, cultural studies and philosophy in Berlin; she also attended seminars with Dieter Schnebel, Luigi Nono and Helga de la Motte. At the same time, she began to explore electronic music and sampling techniques intensively. In 1992 she was awarded first prize in the third Composition Competition for Synthesized and Computerized Music.

Towards the end of the eighties, she co-founded the association ‘zeit-Musik’, together with the composers Mayako Kubo, Franz-Martin Olbrisch and Berthold Türcke as well as the musicologists Frank Hilberg and Gian Mario Borio. Her compositions from that period centre mainly on the relationship between script and sound.

 In 1990, she founded the electro-acoustic ensemble intrors, with whom she won the 1997 composition competition BLAUE BRÜCKE.

The years 1996–2001 saw intensive collaboration with fellow composer Helmut Oehring, which produced a number of joint compositions.

Iris ter Schiphorst has received numerous accolades and scholarships, including in 2004 a period as artist in residence at ‘Die Höge’, a centre for women artists. Her orchestral piece Hundert Komma Null (Hundred Point Zero), which attracted considerable attention, was shortlisted for the 2001 Prix Italia. The ensemble piece Zerstören (Destruction) was nominated for the World Music Days 2007 in Hongkong. In 2008, Miniatures for cello and accordion received the jury’s special prize at the Internationaler Komponistinnenwettbewerb. In 2009 she was nominated for “Deutscher Musikautorenpreis” in the category “Symphonic Music”. She was one of the winners of „ad libitum“ composition competition in 2011. 

Ter Schiphorst’s wide-ranging output includes all genres. Her extensive years of experience as a musician (at first as a classical pianist, later as a bass player, drummer, keyboard player and sound engineer in various rock and pop bands) has had a formative influence on her attitude towards composing and her concept of music.

Her works have been premiered at festivals in Donaueschingen, Witten, Helsinki, Paris, Munich, Basel, Glasgow, Berlin, Stockholm, Cologne, Amsterdam, Porto, Vienna and London as well as at the EXPO and documenta exhibitions.