Farewell (Abschied) (2021)
ABSCHIED
About the work.
Why Else Lasker-Schuler?
Why would an Israeli composer in the 21st century choose to take poems and texts by Else Lasker-Schuler who wrote most of her poetry in the beginning of the 20th century, belonged to late-romantic, expressionist style and wrote in the German language?
First of all I thought that her great poetry should be reminded again to people who never heard her name or her vast creations.
Through my music I intended to bring out her split personality, her poverty, her stubbornness, her suffering and longing for love, her special language that also made her so isolated while living in Jerusalem, her irony, her heart-broken world.
It is not an attempt to describe the story of her life in music. I tried to connect myself to the meaning of the texts I chose, taking into consideration not only her split personality but also the split worlds that she lived in. In the music you can find sounds that I call them ‘Jerusalem sounds’, a combination of Jewish prayer with church bells and middle-eastern motifs.
The work has 4 parts. The first and last part is based on two different poems by the name “Abschied”, that she wrote.
The music starts with a combination of the interval pure 5th that turns to be dissonant as the different instruments collide with each other. Out of this emanates the soprano voice with longing and sadness.
The second part is based on text from the play “Ich und Ich” she wrote in her last years in Jerusalem. It is a very long play, chaotic in structure and full of fantasy borders with insanity. Her troubled soul is well described by her in this play.
I chose a small part of it in which she looks at herself with irony. The music reminds circus music in character and is humoristic and ironic.
The third part is very short and is based on a text which she called “Konzert”. I chose few sentences from this text which leads to the last part that is almost violent in nature, full of rage and even some kind of insanity. The linkage to the previous text brings out another meaning to this “Abschied” and this is to separate from the world she so much loved.
This composition talks about love, solitude, a split personality aware of herself, love of life and the separation from life.
I have been composing it during the times of the Corona virus Pandemic.
Else Lasker-Schueler said goodbye to her lover but also to the world she loved so much. The contrast between her romantic soul and the present world is huge. Our world became hostile and alienated. I felt I could so much identify with her, as I say farewell to the world I loved which, I fear, will not return to be the same.
The world premiere of the work was performed during Covid times with no audience in May 2021 with the Bocumer Symphoniker under Steven Sloane with soprano Rebecca Nelsen.
Ella Milch-Sheriff
October 2020