Paul-Heinz Dittrich - Engführung nach Texten von Paul Celan (Nova, 1989) - Rest in peace!

The German composer Paul-Heinz Dittrich died in Berlin on December 28, 2020 at the age of 90. He died on Monday in Zeuthen near Berlin, the German Academy of the Arts announced two days ago. With his work he had a decisive influence on modern music history, it was said. He set literature by Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and Paul Celan to music; the Akademie der Künste describes him as one of the most influential artistic personalities of the past decades

Dittrich studied composition from 1958 to 1960 as a master student with Rudolf Wagner-Regeny. Since 1983 he was a member of the Academy of Arts of the GDR and trained master class students until 1991. Dittrich was considered an important representative of advanced music in the GDR. He set literature by Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Heiner Müller and especially Paul Celan to music.

He was visiting professor in Freiburg / Breisgau (1979), Los Angeles (1980) and Tel Aviv (1990) as well as at IRCAM Paris (1984). From 1990 to 2002 he was Professor of Composition at the Hanns Eisler Music Academy in Berlin. In 1991 he founded the Brandenburg Colloquium for New Music, which he directed until 2000.


Paul Celan’s parents, German Jews from Bukovina, died in concentration camps. Celan was forced to live in exile, first in a labour camp from which he escaped before finally ending up in Paris where he took his own life in 1970. His often inaccessible poems were inevitably influenced by his own experience during the Nazi era in Germany. As Frank Schneider remarks in his excellent notes, poems such as Todesfuge of 1945 and its companion Engführung of 1958 reflect the atrocities suffered by the Jews in the hells of Nazi concentration camps. Much the same could be said of most of Celan’s verse that has attracted much attention from several present-day composers. Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann, Paul-Heinz Dittrich and Harrison Birtwistle, to name but a few that come to mind, have set some of Celan’s poems. Dittrich’s Engführung is likely to be among the most substantial works inspired by Celan’s words.

Dittrich set parts of Engführung in his Kammermusik IV (1977). This setting prompted him to consider another setting, but the sheer size of the poem soon made it evident that this would be on a large scale. A commission from the Südwestfunk Orchestra gave him the opportunity to realise his project. Engführung was composed in 1980 and first performed during the Donaueschingen Music Days Festival in October 1981. Sigun von Osten was the soloist and the performance was conducted by Matthias Bamert.

The work is scored for soprano, vocal ensemble (2 sopranos, 1 alto, 1 tenor and 2 basses), instrumental ensemble (violin, cello, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, guitar and piano), orchestra, tape and live-electronics. This is undoubtedly an ambitious and substantial work of some considerable complexity; and it would be idle on my part to go into any details about it structure. Suffice it to say that Celan’s poem has some musical structure of its own (engführung means stretto) with refrains and verbal variations that greatly help maintaining some formal coherence to the whole. The work opens with a prologue sung by the vocal ensemble on words restated later, either literally or in variants, and concluding the poem, though not the work as will be seen later. The various stanzas follow, interspersed with orchestral interludes, most of which are quite short, though the third interlude, occurring halfway in the work and signalling its climax, is a rather weighty orchestral section. The whole setting alternates according to the words and is set to full orchestral accompaniment or to chamber-like ensembles. The vocal parts, generally set in a strongly expressionistic manner, sometimes relies on speech and on pre-recorded material. For the coda to the epilogue, Dittrich chose a late poem written in 1967 commemorating the pre-Fascist murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht heard mostly on tape and progressively silencing the singers and the orchestra. As Schneider again aptly remarks, "what finally comes into the picture is the continuity of active resistance against any form of barbarism, not least against its least conspicuous but most dangerous variant : indifference". Indeed, for all its complexity, Dittrich’s Engführung is a powerfully gripping work of protest. No light stuff, though, but well worth the effort.

Tracklist:

01. Nirgends fragt es nach dir

02. Verbracht ins Gelände

03. Zwischespiel

04. Der Ort, wo sie lagen

05. Jahre, Jahre

06. Zwischenspiel

07. Zum Aug geh

08. Orkane von je

09. Zwischenspiel

10. er, es fiel nicht ns Wort

11. Zwischenspiel

12. Schoß an

13. Zwischenspiel

14. In der Eulenflucht

15. Also stehen noch Tempel

16. Verbracht ins Gelände

Paul-Heinz Dittrich - Engführung nach Texten von Paul Celan (Nova, 1989)

(320 kbps, cover art included)