Guest performance

Aya Metwalli: The Pure & the Damned

for seven voices & wind-dynamic organ ^WP

Daniel Glaus, organ

Neue Vocalsolisten

‘The Pure & the Damned’ was composed by the Egyptian composer Aya Metwalli, who lives in Bern, for the Neue Vocalsolisten, as well as for the organist Daniel Glaus and the microtonally tuned, wind-dynamically driven organ he developed.

Abstract

»Between the 15th and 18th centuries, thousands of people were prosecuted and executed for witchcraft in Switzerland. The Pure & the Damned draws on digitized legal records of the witchcraft trials conducted in Switzerland, available through the online collection of Swiss law sources. The fire behind the piece—both metaphorical and literal—is the story of a woman named Anni Nössberger-Bähler, whose tongue was cut out and who was burned in Fribourg in 1644 for eating meat sourced from Bern during the fasting season; a woman executed for choosing to enjoy a simple pleasure. The piece is informed by demonological texts such as the Malleus Malefi carum, a treatise on witchcraft first published in 1486 by the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer, and essays about evil in contemporary philosophy, such The Devil’s Share, published in 1944 by Denis de Rougemont, a Swiss writer and cultural theorist. Seven voices oscillate between authority and submission, embodying judges, the accused, and the collective hysteria around the unknown and otherness. The wind-dynamic organ acts as a spirit, generating continuous airflow and microtonal pitches, producing tension that shapes the experience of both performers and listeners. The piece invites audiences into an act of reflective listening, where sound expresses how fear is systematically codified into law, and how silence itself can become a form of violence.«

(Aya Metwalli)