Oxana Omelchuk: In ruhig festem Tritt

My most vivid childhood memories are of the Pioneer summer camps: places full of sunshine, fresh air and adventure, but at the same time characterised by an ideologically shaped education. An integral part of this were the chants–Речёвки, chants, battle cries, slogans–the inevitable accompaniment to political propaganda.

 

We marched everywhere, all the time: singing on the way to meals, to play, to work, even on the way to bed. This experience gave me an ambivalent relationship with marching–a kind of love-hate relationship. Perhaps it was precisely this ambivalent feeling that awakened in me the desire to explore this tension in my current piece.

 

At the same time, I feel–and probably not only me–an oppressive feeling in view of the developments in my country, as if time were turning back. They are back, the ‘military and patriotic’ children’s clubs, where shooting training and dealing with protesters are practised.

In this context, Bertolt Brecht’s poem Der Kälbermarsch (The Calves’ March, 1933) became an important reference point for the work. The biting parody of the National Socialist Horst Wessel song served as the basis for the composition’s content.

(Oxana Omelchuk)