Foreword

When my father sketched this song cycle in May 2002 as a commission for the Hermann Hesse Festival in Calw, he could not have known that these songs would be his last completed work. Inspired by the whimsical texts, which show the revered poet from a rather rare side in previous song creations, he set to work with great motivation. As the composition process progressed, the increasingly clearer bad news of medical findings became more and more frequent. Nevertheless, he worked on the many details of the score with unusual perseverance and satisfaction, making final corrections on 21 July. He parodied the stylistic devices of dodecaphony, jazz and 19th century music with which he was familiar, as well as his own, unmistakably personal tonal language in the spirit of the poetic model.
The fact that these cheerful, almost comedic songs now stand at the end of his extensive oeuvre corresponds to the serene wisdom of old age that Bertold Hummel was repeatedly recognised for posthumously.
My father died on 9 August 2002 - the 40th anniversary of the poet's death.

Martin Hummel