Welt-Parlament (World Parliament), (1995) Südfunk-Chor Stuttgart Rupert Huber This a cappella work is the first act of the opera Wednesday from Light. The choir is located at the left and right of the stage. The president of the World Parliament (the conductor) has an own microphone, as do the tubular bells which sound as signals at selected moments of the work. Those are played by the conductor, who also needs a small wooden hammer for the purpose of calling for order. In the middle of the stage hang at least 4 microphones amplifiying the choir soloists who walk there for singing their solo parts. This set-up explains why the voices of the president and the choir soloists often tower above the voices of the choir. The bell sounds, and numerous individual voices recite, in German speechsong, key and cliché words for a discussion of the World Parliament about love, creating at times a very dense texture. All voices sustain their speechsong on a single pitch, making the whol! e scene a texturally intricate, but musically stern sermon. After some time, the bell sounds again and all voices collectively change to another pitch. In this whole initial phase of the work, the shifting of voices against each other is amazing, as are the changes in density of texture and the surges in volume. The addition of the sound from ticking (electronic) metronomes brought in by each choir singer except the tenors, with each metronome set at a different tempo, gives the whole scene a strange but
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