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- Arnulf Herrmann
Ein Kinderlied (Dämonen) (2021)
(Vier Strophen für Orchester und Schallplatte)- Henry Litolff’s Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (World)
- 3(III:pic).3(III:ca).0(2bcl)+4bb-cl.3(III:cbn)/0+6f-hn.0+3bb-tpt.3.1/timp.3perc/str(14.12.10.8.8)
- 21 min
- German
Programme Note
A wavering chamber of memory
A nursery rhyme, an old record, voices: Lullabies have a soporific and hypnotic effect - not only on children. The sounds preserve memories, images, but also the semi-dark, the buried, blurred, distorted and rewritten. Because there is a flip side beyond the security. Thus the Sandman – sung about as a supposedly harmless little sandman in the song – is also the figure who steals children's eyes in E.T.A. Hoffmann's work. Trivialization and abyss, security and trauma stand side by side quite abruptly.
The musical center is the trance-like Schlafe of the children's song. It is intended to calm and yet is also an urgent call to finally fall asleep. In the course of the piece, it increasingly takes on a life of its own until it finally begins to make its manic rounds: Schlafe, schlafe, schlaf ’ du, mein Kindelein...; the mind begins to dawn and the demons emerge from the semi-darkness.
The famous song melody has been skinned and transformed many times over the course of its history: From the originally frivolous French chanson Une petite feste of the 16th century, to the 17th century rewriting and “detoxification” of the very popular melody by the Jesuit priest Friedrich von Spee into the Christmas carol Zu Bethlehem geboren, to Zuccalmaglio's fictional folk and lullaby Die Blümelein sie schlafen in the 19th century. But regardless of all the transformation: sediments and deposits of history remain as remnants, which – even if no longer on the surface – are preserved and stored in the song.
The record that provides the framework also functions as a memory. White noise and historical song fragments are inscribed on it. The record is interwoven with the orchestra, which projects the music into the room, accompanied by slowly rotating speakers.
Last but not least, it also provides the temporal framework by limiting the duration to a single side of the record. But the end is only technical: the needle lifts, but the song is not over.