The cellar on the roof – Literature and music for „Archiv der Zukunft“
Rolf-Bernhard Essig and Franz Tröger intertwined four short stories, three music-box pieces, and a canon on behalf of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. They form a kind of basket in which the "Archive of the Future" comes together with the spirit of the place where it stands and with the people who lived and still live there.
Under the overall title "The Cellar on the Roof," the Bamberg author tells of what was there before the "Archive of the Future," what is there now, and what perhaps will be one day. The titles of the four stories indicate that the secret, the uncanny, and the cheerful are connected: 1. Prehistory: How the Coming Came and Prophecy Failed. 2. Intermediate Time: Aging in the Shape of a Pear and that a lump is a vessel and doesn't like to be alone. 3. Almost Present: About Digging and Questioning. 4. Almost Future: The Cellar on the Roof.
Essig's duo partner, the Bamberg composer and multi-instrumentalist Franz Tröger, compiled house music that enriches and deepens the four stories. With his music box and hand-punched punch cards, he brings ancient music into the mechanized present. First, there's the three-and-a-half-millennia-old Nikkal Hymn (and thus the oldest piece of music we have), the 500-year-old motet "Nuper rosarum flores" by Guillaume Dufay (written for the dedication of another special building, the cathedral in Florence), and Tröger's respectfully free decomposition of Dufay. Finally, the two composed and wrote the lyrics for a canon for the "Archive of the Future."