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http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Apr08/Nono_Prometeo_wwe2sacd20605.htm Posted by Martin Walker on April 23, 2008, 10:45 am 88.72.210.184 Fascinating review, Anne, as usual, and I hope your enthusiasm is contagious - but it is a pity that the German has been mangled in transmission; the 3rd stanza reads as a whole: Doch uns ist gegeben,/ Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn,/ Es schwinden, es fallen/Die leidenden Menschen/Blindlings von einer/Stunde zur andern,/ Wie Wasser von Klippe/Zu Klippe geworfen,/ Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab. To clarify: this poem is not one of H's "late poems",which come from the long years of retreat from the world from 1806 to his death in 1843, but from the years 1796-98 when he was still full of both love for Susanne Gontard and revolutionary fervour. That was probably very significant for Nono's composition. One of the quietistic later poems comes at the end of Britten's Hölderlinfragmente. I wish I could be there for the South Bank performance - I'll just have to make do with the recording, as I also missed it in Frankfurt years ago. - I think the tragedy of hearing is that we forget the radical immediacy of what we hear & become inured to Schicksal - Fate.  Post a Response

Re: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Apr08/Nono_Prometeo_wwe2sacd20605.htm Posted by Anne on April 25, 2008, 2:17 am, in reply to "http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Apr08/Nono_Prometeo_wwe2sacd20605.htm" 80.7.2.56 Hello Martin ! Nono isn't setting the poem as a whole but only a fragment thereof. The few lines he uses are repeated and elaborated so much that the section lasts lasts over 8 minutes. I don't think Nono was particularly concerned about the exact details of the poem per se but was more interested in the concept of restlessness and the image of water thrown from cliff to cliff. Water shatters against the cliffs but reshapes itself in new forms when it hits the sea again. It's a pretty good symbol of how the music works. The section is also only 8 minutes in a work that runs over 2 hours so it's not easy to extrapolate from this fragment alone what Nono means by "the tragedy of listening". It's just such an amazing experience.  Post a Response

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