Noli me tangere. Political Violence, Protestant Ethic and Musical Composition in a Section of Helmut Lachenmann’s The Little Match Girl
Studying sections 15a and 15b of Helmut Lachenmann’s The Little Match Girl, which set to music an excerpt from a letter written by Gudrun Ensslin, a youth friend of the composer and activist in the 1960s West German student movements, then in the actions of the Red Army Faction, from 1970 to her death in prison in 1977, this article deals with the relations between music composition, Protestant ethics and political commitment. Describing the music of the two sections and its principles, where the need for action rather than intention is paramount, it questions a biographical context and the cultural, historical and political conditions that make it possible to integrate it into a work of art at the end of the twentieth century.