ID...a (2024/25)
for grandpiano, four pianists and electronics
duration: approx. 30 minutes
In addition to simply being a piece of music, "ID...a" tells a story of censorship, oppression, deprivation of liberty, and increasing isolation. The piece is inspired by the life of Ida Dehmel. Initially Ida Dehmel was immersed in the vibrant and wildly experimental artistic scene of her time as interlocutor of artists, patron of the arts, fighter for the emancipation of female artists, wife of the poet Richard Dehmel. But during fascist Nazi times more and more people around her disappeared through death, persecution, exile, and suicide. Ida Dehmel, who herself had jewish roots, was forbidden to pursue her activities in the cultural scene, lived in her museum-like house in which documents of her deceased husband and other famous artists where archived and waited, fearing to be arrested any time. Finally she chose to take her own life. ID...a is far from telling this story accurately, but rather offers a much simplified sequence of images that represent something similar, but abstract, perhaps universal for the disastrous mechanics of authoritarian regimes.
The piece consists of five movements:
#1. Four People. Rondo precipitado - Hommage á Prokofiev
#2. Three People. Sheherazade's Recitative. "Mein Freiheit" [My freedom]
#3. Two People - (...verklärte Nacht...) [transfigured night]
#4. One Person. (...wind over the graves...). Toccata desolata (gradus ad parnassum)
#5. No One. Postludium
#1 takes some bars of the Finale of Prokofiev's 7th piano sonata as a starting point. #2 sets a poem by Else Lasker Schüler, a friend of Richard Dehmel who managed to escape from Germany, to music. #3 is based on some fragments from Schönberg's "Transfigured Night", a piece inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel which again is inspired by Ida's and Richard's relationship. #5 uses a poem by Richard Dehmel.
Here are the two poems which are important for understanding in a free english translation.
#2
My freedom
Let no one rob me of it.
If I die by the wayside,
Dear mother,
Come and lift me up
On your wings to heaven. I know you were moved
By my lonely wanderings,
The playful ticking
Of my child's heart.
(Else Lasker Schüler)
#5
When the rain drips through the gutter
at night, you lie there and listen,
no one can enter the house,
you lie alone,
alone: Oh, if only he would come! Then there is a knock,
a loud knock-can you hear it? It echoes softly,
faintly in the clock case;
then there is dead silence.
(Richard Dehmel)