Abo@MUMUTH: Brother of Sleep; Photo: Johannes Gellner

Introduction to the Schlafes Bruder [Brother of Sleep] project for actress and e-organ

Why do Captain Nemo, Count Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera and Johannes Elias Alder (the hero in the novel Brother of Sleep, by Robert Schneider) play the organ, of all instruments? Does it have an inherent fatalistic appeal? Is it in league with Death himself? Is it in fact the “Sister of Sleep”?

“Those who love do not sleep.”

This is the challenge the novel’s hero sets himself at the start of Robert Schneider’s tale. And yet the gift of constant wakefulness is attributed most notably to God:

“Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”
(Psalm 121:4)

The music aficionado Robert Schneider would surely have known the famous setting by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Elijah – another reason for the name he gives to the novel’s hero. Love isn’t the only reason to stay awake though:

“The Dark Lord isn’t resting.”
(Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

And as the saying goes, contrary to the challenge the novel’s hero sets himself:

“Those who sleep do not sin.” * *

Acting on this advice promises Paradise: before the fruit is tasted, in the heart of the garden it is easier to dream because one is unaware and thus subjectively innocent. In the Garden of Gethsemane, by contrast, the Lord says to Peter:

“Couldn’t you keep watch with me for one hour?

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

So it is a question of consciousness and the issue of whether consciousness is a sin. Does Johannes Elias Alder fail to integrate with the (unconscious) village community because he is more awake, hears more, perceives more? Or because courting a woman is alien to him? Perhaps because he thinks that it makes no sense, if both people want the same thing?

But back to the organ: The “Queen of Instruments” certainly struggles to play exuberantly in concert with others. Is she too chaste? Or actually too aware?

At any rate she is no more likeable when she imitates others. Other instruments, even trumpets and trombones, are uncertain in her presence. An unnerving trait that is also seen in Johannes Elias Alder, who can impersonate everyone in the village:

“Many people are afraid when they hear the sound of their own voice.”

The e-organ, however, as the perfect, alluring femme fatale, not only copies her older sister’s deceptive skill, ostensibly committing conscious lèse-majesté. What is worse, she is beginning to poach from her in every acoustic territory, surreptitiously posing the question: why do we actually need musicians? Is she inciting in us the fear of being replaced – as the internet of things is doing? Or is she merely nurturing our fear of recognising ourselves in the mirror?

If music-making itself is called in question, then we are facing the homunculus, Frankenstein’s monster and the androids, and ultimately the question: how real is reality?

We feel enormous trepidation in the face the overwhelming awareness that destroys the delightful illusion, the putative meaning, the trust that turns out not to be unlimited after all, leading us to fear that we have been reduced to nothing.

In the novel, it is the first tuning of the village organ that cuts the established church musician’s thread of life.

Gunther Rost, 4 May 2016

* Chevalier Casanova takes this thought further: “Those who sleep do not sin – those who sin beforehand sleep better.”Too much knowledge in the sense of erotic satiation – the “little death”, as the saying goes – is viewed with a critical eye. Blindness is threatened, presumably because of the danger of mislaying one’s rose-coloured spectacles forever...