Poems of the Four Elements (2010)
(Book II Poems of the Earth)

The work is divided into 4 separate books. Each book can be performed individually. Each book has a length of approx. 20 minutes. You can also play 2 books one after the other, as well as all books one after the other. At the end I give a few examples of how you could build programmes. You can also play one movement from each book and get a kind of symphony of the elements in 4 movements with a duration of about 35 minutes.

These poems are written for the Swingle Singers. They perform as soloists, as in a solo concerto. However, the orchestra has a very important and - especially in Feuer very virtuoso - part to play. It is not a solo concerto for 8 singers, but rather a kind of Sinfonia Konzertante. Swingles are used in all their facets: the typical light singing that characterises them, great virtuosity, older techniques such as skat as well as newer ones such as beat boxing or rap are not avoided, but are taken out of their ‘usual’ context and used in different contexts because of their expressive possibilities.

Each book is dedicated to poetic-philosophical contemplation through music and a combination of appropriately selected excerpts from poems and texts in 4 languages from Virgil to Rilke, Char, via Goethe, Nietsche, Shelley, Blake, Rimbaud etc.