Georg Haider
*1965
World premiere: 10 December 2003, Würzburg
Ensemble Maderna
I owe a great deal to Bertold Hummel, including, in part, my current stay here in Montreal, and so it was very fitting that the first composition I wrote in Montreal was this piece in his memory.
Georg Haider 2003
John of the Cross
Songs of the Human Soul
(translated by Ulrich Dobhan OCD, Elisabeth Hense, Elisabeth Peeters OCD)
One dark night,
inflamed with burning longing for love,
— O happy fate! —
I went out, unnoticed;
my house had already fallen silent.
In the dark and safe,
down the secret staircase, disguised,
- O happy fate! -
in the dark and stealthily;
my house had already settled down for the night.
In the night, happily,
secretly, that no one
and I looked at nothing
with no other light or guidance than that which burned in my heart.
This led me
more surely than the light of midday,
where, waiting for me,
whom I knew well, to where no one appeared.
O night, how you guided me!
O night, more lovable than the dawn!
O night, which brought together lover and beloved,
and transformed the beloved into the beloved!
Upon my breast, blossoming,
which was reserved entirely for him alone,
there he had fallen asleep,
and as I caressed him,
the breeze stirred the cedars.
The breath of the battlements,
as I ran my fingers through his hair,
with his gentle hand
he wounded my neck
and made all my senses fade.
I lingered behind, lost in the moment,
I bent my face over my beloved;
Everything ceased; I let myself
calmly let my worries fade away beneath the lime trees.
Georg Haider (born 1965 in Erding) studied bassoon with Eberhard Buschmann and Georg Klütsch and composition with Bertold Hummel and Heinz Winbeck at the University of Music in Würzburg, successfully completing Winbeck’s masterclass in 1997. As a bassoonist, he won prizes at international competitions with the Tiepolo Quintet. His composition ‘Manse rituelle für Kammerensemble’ received a recommendation from both the jury of the International Composition Competition at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 1994 and the jury of the Vienna International Composition Competition in 1997. Haider has been an artistic advisor to the A*Devantgarde Festival in Munich since 1997. From May to October 2000, he was a scholarship holder at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2002, he was invited to spend a month in Prättigau (Switzerland) as part of the international art project ‘OSPITI’. Since April 2003, he has been in Montreal for a year at the invitation of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
