Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Recitation

Kizuna Quartet

Der Vogelsang (The Songbird)
Recitation music for Reciter and String Quartet to: Christoph Martin Wieland's "Der Vogelsang oder die drey Lehren" — "The Songbird or The Three Lessons"

"Der Vogelsang" is above all a wonderfully light and yet precisely balanced poetic work, the verses of which come across as naturally as if they weren’t verses at all. Nothing is searched for, nothing is "for the sake of rhyming." – In terms of content, "Der Vogelsang" is, if you like, a didactic piece, but one that is at odds with common moral teachings: whoever has something only deserves to have it if he knows how to use it – which in this case means to appreciate its beauty by enjoying it.
The story goes like this. A person foolish both in the intellectual and the emotional sense (Hans) has come in possession of a wonderful piece of land – a castle with a park (it is not known whether he bought it or inherited it). He walks around this castle and park and does not recognize the beauty surrounding him; eating, drinking, going out for a breath of fresh air, counting money, sleeping, being bored, this is how he spends his days. The park has a soul: a little bird sings its songs there – magical songs, because when they cease to sound, the park dies. Hans hears what the bird is singing, and at first finds it entertaining but irrelevant, and later, annoying. He catches the bird in order to sell it for a lot of money. The bird asks for its life in vain, then offers him a deal: its life for three good lessons.

These three lessons are commonplace wisdom: don't cry for something you never had – don't let go of what you have – don't believe everything you hear. The bird presents these three trivial lessons with the revelation that there is a magic stone in his stomach that fulfills every wish. Hans becomes nearly mad with anger that the bird has deceived him – both out of the stone and with the meaningless lessons – until the bird shows him that he has deceived himself. He believed the fairy tale about the stone and in doing so violated all three lessons.
The way this story is told in Wieland's verses, how the lessons, the story of the stone, Hans' reactions and the bird's mockery are interwoven, cannot be retold, one has to read it or hear it. In the end the bird flies away – the garden dies, the leaves fall, "the beautiful trees suddenly wither all around, the beautiful spring runs dry, the flowers all die before they can bud, the entire fairy land is gone, nothing remains but rock and dry sand."
[further info see booklet text]

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