A German national known only as Stranger spent 40 days and nights in isolation in the Namib Desert in 2018, composing a symphony called ‘Mankind’ on his grand piano, which was positioned inside a transparent cube.
‘Mankind’ will make its world premiere in Munich, Germany, on Sunday, 23 October.
Corresponding with The Namibian from Germany, Stranger says ‘Mankind’ is a symphonic poem in four movements dealing with personal experiences and basic human developments, namely “dawn – ascension – fall – awakening”.
“Therefore, it is also called ‘Mankind’, because it deals with the experience of civilisations. It is composed in a classical tonal style and is in the tradition of high romanticism,” he says.
The recordings were made through permanently installed microphones in the cube in the desert and published together with film footage on social networks. The cube was made of a light, but extremely, stable membrane skin, not glass, which is apparently still in the desert.
Stranger’s team was stationed in a camp and made the video and audio recordings from a distance. In addition, when it was ensured that no encounters could occur, his computer was fetched, and his daily letters were sent to his children. He himself had no internet and no contact with the outside world.
Stranger says he has travelled to many deserts around the world, but one day he and his team were standing on a hill on the edge of the valley where the cube would later be placed.
“Everyone knew immediately that this would be the right place for the cube and myself,” he says.
Some of the bureaucratic challenges when coming to Namibia for the project involved customs officials, who found it inexplicable what Stranger wanted with a grand piano in the desert.
Transporting the grand piano to the desert was a difficult affair, too.
The biggest challenge, though, according to Stranger, was the construction of the cube and protecting the instrument from the heat during the day and the cold at night when he was not playing.
In addition, Stranger created a land art installation during the 40 days: the first bars of the symphony were created from more than 250 000 stones over 120 metres.
Stranger says the whole idea started as an image in his mind.
“At first, for many years, there was only the image of the cube in the desert, with the grand piano inside and the starry sky above it. This went on for three years until I gave in to ‘self’ and started talking about it, and actually went into the planning phase,” Stranger says.
There are plans to travel through Africa with a volunteer orchestra, ideally from Namibia, as a caravan of strangers, starting next year. Ideally, there would have to be a casting in Namibia and South Africa to select the musicians.
“It should be people who could otherwise not be able to play in an orchestra and who would fulfil a dream: play their instrument in an orchestra and travel the world,” he says.
Attempts to discover the true identity of Stranger – besides the illusive figure shown on the internet – were unsuccessful.
According to him, “music has no face”, so he remains unknown, and will remain anonymous. He may represent the stranger whom everyone encounters every day. Or, any and every kind of projection can be interpreted about him, he says.