Beschreibung
These songs set words from three poems by the Austrian expressionist poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914):
• Grodek (songs 1,3 and 6)
• Delirium (songs 2 and 5)
• Sister’s Garden (song 4)
Trakl trained as a pharmacist and served in Poland during the early days of WWI, stewarding the recovery of some ninety soldiers who had been wounded in the fierce campaign against the Russians. He tried to shoot himself from the strain but his comrades prevented him. Hospitalized at a military hospital in Kraków, Trakl lapsed into worse depression and finally succumbed to an overdose of cocaine.
His poetry deals with several main themes which are repeated quite obsessively throughout his work: the evening (and the colour purple), silence (particularly the silence of the dead), his sister (who he portrays as both angel and whore) and images from nature, such as birds, trees and flowers, though never in a comforting pastorale. I hope that the music captures something of the despair, beauty and wild delirium of his poetry.