Georg Katzer - Georg Katzer: Mensch und Maschine (2024)

In this subject of "man and machine", the triad of Georg Katzer's personality, his general and highly differentiated thinking and feelings in musical terms, and his composing form a unity of almost infinitely unfolding diversity. For him there is no one-dimensional either/or. His all-encompassing worldview, characterized by humanism and interpreting man as a holistic being, determines his artistically discursive and, through music, at times highly emotional view of the subject “man and machine”.

The texts of all four works on this CD refer to the visionary, far ahead of its time writing L'homme machine (Man a Machine), a radical combat pamphlet published in 1748 in favor of the French Enlightenment by the French poet, philosopher and thinker Julien Offray de La Mettrie from the 18th century, who had to flee from the Jesuits to Prussia in October 1748 and received asylum from Prussian King Frederick II. The encounter with de La Mettrie's writings and his all-encompassing view of the topic of "man and machine" gave Georg Katzer the final impulse to turn his artistic attention to the subject, the problems with which he had been confronted with in everyday life in the GDR for too long.