Musicians’ group calls for shutdown of the German secret service
By
Dietmar Henning
23 August 2018
On Tuesday morning, the music action network Lebenslaute concluded its protest against the German secret service (the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV) with a grand closing concert before an enthusiastic audience in Cologne. The day before musicians and singers from the organisation had blocked all access roads and entrances to the concert hall.
In an almost two-hour-long concert, the musicians and choir of Lebenslaute, which translates as “sounds of life” in English, presented symphonic works, a Turkish lament and their own arrangements of the James Bond theme and the song “That What Friends Are For” (also known as “The Vulture Song”) from the 1976 animated Disney film, The Jungle Book.
Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture and excerpts from the opera Orpheus and Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck were played in turns with the choir. In the end, many of those present danced to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2.
The conductor Ulrich Klan announced the waltz with the words, “From Shostakovich, we have learned how to make beautiful music under all-pervasive spying and surveillance.”
Lebenslaute has been holding summer protest actions against “unlawful places” for more than 30 years. This year’s summer protest action was directed against the secret service. It was held under the motto, “With suites and cantata against the state within the state—shut down the secret service!”
Musicians’ group calls for shutdown of the German secret service
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