Work of the Week - Dieter Schnebel: "Mild und leise..."

On the 22nd March 2010, Schnebel's "Mild und leise...", a setting of poems by Ingeborg Bachmann for alto voice and ensemble will receive its world premiere at the Universität der Künste in Berlin as part of the MaerzMusik festival. The new work, along with Schnebel’s previous setting of Bachmann’s poems, Ultima speranza written in 2003, will both be performed together by Trio Accanto and vocalist Susanne Otto to form concert length cycle of Bachmanns' mature lyrical work.

The concert will also celebrate Schnebel's 80th birthday and his long standing association with the university where he was professor of experimental music between 1976 and 1995.

Schnebels' 2003 Bachmann settings were commissioned by Bachmann's sister and nephew and premiered in Vienna for the 30th anniversary of death of the poet. Whilst the earlier settings of the poems can be interpreted as love songs, Schnebel also highlights the debt of his cycles to Wagner:

"Mild und leise...": does that not come from "Tristan"? Ingeborg Bachmann’s drafts of poems dating from her year of crisis in 1963 are in fact teeming with quotations from Wagner operas. These form a radical contrast to the somewhat clinical-expressionist language and content of her poetry and also display great inner conflict in the expression of their subject of disaster and misfortune. In their musical transformation, the Wagner quotations appear in original form and are therefore disconnected – and simultaneously encapsulated – from the otherwise serial progressions, enabling the creation of a musical dimension which corresponds with their language.

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