Wintersongs

„Wintergesänge“ by Harald Weiss was composed between 1984 and 1986 in Schreyahn, a small place in northern Germany as well as in Rome, where Harald Weiss lived for one year on a scholarship at the German Academy “Villa Massimo”. The cycle was written incidentally rather than by intention, as Harald Weiss says himself, long intervals interrupting the work. The instruments belong mostly to the percussion group and are supplemented or opposed by the human voice in its various sound-colours. At a studio of the Hessischer Rundfunk Harald Weiss has recorded in playback not only the percussion parts but the vocal parts as well consist of elements sung and spoken. There is no text, words remain unintelligible, evoking at most some associations. However, Harald Weiss has written a couple of poems for his “Wintergesänge” which he describes as subjective, dissociated thoughts of the composer, like those programmatic titles, which Debussy put at the end of his pieces as aids to comprehension.