Steen-Andersen

For more than nine years, from 1923 to 1932, Kurt Schwitters worked meticulously on his sound poem “Ursonate.” Amid the most severe global crises, he developed the rigorous structure of a classical, four-movement sonata, into which he incorporated raw linguistic material, transforming it into an “anti-sonata”—a deconstruction of the art of the educated middle class. Schwitters studied at the Royal Saxon Academy of Arts in Dresden from 1909 to 1915, during the founding phase of the Festspielhaus Hellerau, and left an indelible mark on early modernism with his famous sound poem.

With “UR!,” composer and director Simon Steen-Andersen is developing—through several residencies at HELLERAU—a concept for staging, expanding, and exploring Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate.” The project combines live performance with video and electronics to create a surreal, multimedia journey. At its center is singer Michael Schmid, who is known for his decades-long study of and hundreds of performances of the “Ursonate.” Steen-Andersen takes up the core concepts of the “Ursonate”—abstraction, repetition, and the breakdown of meaning and disciplines—and weaves them into a fever-dream-like blend of biography and history, of media fragments and subconscious memories.

Before the work—commissioned by the Donaueschingen Musiktage and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation—receives its world premiere in Donaueschingen, HELLERA­ U will offer a first glimpse of the new piece during an Open Studio event. The Dresden premiere will take place as part of the 2027 Dresdner Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik.

Register via:

heublein@hellerau.org