Lieder im Entgleiten

The Work

Lieder im Entgleiten (Songs While Slipping Away)—an extensive and opulent song cycle for baritone and orchestra.

In three parts, the work tells a story—a story of the celebration of life, of slipping away, of amazement and transfiguration.

The lyricism of the art songs are juxtaposed with dramatically performed texts, semi-staged action, and direct address to the audience, which is captivatingly drawn into the action, surrounded by sound from music on stage, sound from afar, and texts rising from offstage.

The Text

4500-year-old texts from ancient Egypt, works by the great philosophers of the Orient and Occident, passages from the Old Testament and historical and contemporary poetry combine to form a libretto that takes the audience on a journey.

Poetic statements, sentences and aphorisms by Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Justinus Kerner, Paul Celan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jean de la Croix, Manfred Osten and Hartmut Oliver Horst, among others, are used.

The Music

Scored for large orchestra and elaborately and colorfully orchestrated, the music follows the text, depicting the range of human feeling and experience.

Following in the tradition of the great symphonic works, the music transports the listener into a world of sound that is captivating in its individuality and disturbing in its emotional impact.

The music of the “Lieder im Entgleiten” encompasses, in a crescendo, the harmonious to dissonant contrast of life and death.
At the same time, it carries the emotional motifs of the singing voice to the sound of a transfiguration.
— Hartmut Oliver Horst —

Dedication to the “singer of the century”

Photo: Sonja Ebner-Kohn, Wikipedia

The work is dedicated to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the “singer of the century”, who, with his vocal artistry “bordering on a miracle” (Le Monde), gifted the world with spiritual and musical experiences of the highest order.

The artist, who received countless honors—including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, honorary doctorates from the universities of Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Sorbonne and Heidelberg, as well as the honorary citizenship of the city of Berlin—would have been 100 years old in 2025.