Müller-Lieder (1980 – texts Heiner Müller)

Song cycle of 13 songs for solo voice, any 2 solo instruments, texts by Heiner Müller, 21 minutes

Müller Lieder was born of my early visits to Heiner Müller in E. Berlin (almost a decade before the Berlin Wall was to fall). On one occasion he offered me a six-volume set of his writing (ironically published in W. Berlin which got me into trouble along with a Bulgarian volume at the Friedrichstraße border). He was offering me the possibility to look at his theatre pieces and his poetry to see what I might like to work with. He particularly suggested I try something with his text, Der Mann im Fahrstuhl, which formed part of his play, Der Auftrag. The text is amazing; however, I ‘heard’ Der Glückliche Hand from Schönberg and couldn’t envision composing anything like that. Suffice to say that Heiner Goebbels later made a jazz-inspired version of this text that was an enormous success.

Nonetheless, I found 13 texts I want to do something with. One was in fact ‘chosen’ by Müller, entitled E.L. He told me I’d probably have trouble doing anything with that one. He was wrong.

I ended up composing a song cycle, something unimaginable for an experimental composer moving increasingly into electroacoustic composition. Still, a little known fact is that this composer is a talented melody maker and probably took a wrong turn in his career.

Here follows the 13 songs and then the score. In the performance Martha Herr was the vocalist and John Boudler somehow was able to play both parts on his own 99% of the time. They recorded this for WDR radio in Cologne and it was broadcast after Schuber’s Goethe Lieder. So much for being an experimental composer.