Der Knacks

Willemsen, Roger

Roger Willemsen’s book ‘The Knacks’ is essayistic, literary, cultural studies and political at the same time. Müller-Wieland explains, when he read it, he was fascinated by the author's honest and authentic style. ‘At the same time, a kind of compositional exclusion or encirclement process began within me,’ says the composer. Willemsen talks about his childhood, about losing his father at an early age, about nights in foreign cities and regions, about Afghanistan, about the guards at Guantanamo. Willemsen's love of music and extensive knowledge of music have brought the author and the composer directly together. ‘The melodrama genre forms’, says Müller-Wieland, ‘the archaic bowl for the declamatory and fabulating crossing into new territory through a panorama of signs of aging, perceptions of transience, injuries and types of death.’