Lieder im Entgleiten

The Work

Lieder im Entgleiten (Songs in the Slipping Away) – an emotionally charged and opulent song cycle for baritone, large orchestra, distant orchestra, voices from afar, and a boy actor.

In three movements, the work tells a story – a story of the celebration of life, of slipping away, of wonder, and of transfiguration.

The lyricism of the art songs is set in dialogue with dramatically performed texts, semi-staged action, and a direct address to the audience, which is drawn into the unfolding drama in a wholly compelling manner – enveloped by music on the podium, sound from a distance, and texts rising from the wings, suffused with sound.

The Text

Texts four and a half millennia old from ancient Egypt, works of the great philosophers of the Orient and Occident, passages from the Old Testament, and poetry both historical and contemporary are woven together into a libretto that takes the audience on a journey.

Poetic utterances, maxims, and aphorisms are drawn from, among others, 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.

The Music

Scored for large orchestra and orchestrated with both lavishness and brilliance of colour, the music follows the text, mapping the full breadth of human feeling and experience.

Firmly rooted in the tradition of the great symphonic works, the music transports the listener into a sound world that captivates through its singularity and overwhelms through its emotional power.

The music of ‘Lieder im Entgleiten’ spans, in a sustained intensification, the harmonic to dissonant contrast of life and death.

It bears at the same time the inner motifs of the vocal line through to the sound of a transfiguration.

Dedication to a ‘Singer of the Century’

Photo: Sonja Ebner-Kohn, Wikipedia

The work is dedicated to the ‘singer of the century’ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose vocal artistry – described by Le Monde as ‘bordering on the miraculous’ – was a gift to the world of intellectual and musical experiences of the very highest order.

In 2025, the artist would have turned 100. He was the recipient of countless honours, among them the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit with Star, honorary doctorates from the Universities of Harvard, Oxford, Yale, the Sorbonne, and Heidelberg, and the honorary citizenship of the City of Berlin.

The Composer

Markus Schönewolfy writes ‘music of a poetic quality, as though composed for imagined landscapes’, as the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger has written; performances of his music have been described as ‘an almost magical experience’. Interpreted by outstanding soloists and ensembles, performed internationally, and documented on disc, Schönewolf’s music compels through its ‘intellectual and emotional depth and virtuosic joy in performance‘.