Arno Holz (1863–1929), the founder and theorist of Naturalism, was already pointing towards Expressionism in his later years. This is particularly true of his verse work *Phantasus* (almost 1,600 pages), consisting of lines of varying lengths arranged around the vertical centreline of the page.

The cycle comprises six selected poems, the meaning of which is interpreted musically. The guitar often takes on the role of commentator here — particularly in the third song , “See, See, sonnigste See”, which represents the dramatic climax of the work. The guitar preludes of the first and last songs correspond with one another, thereby forming a kind of formal framework. Whilst the lyrical element predominates in Songs 1, 2 and 4, Songs 3 and 5 are of a more dramatic nature. In the sixth song, a 36-bar pedal point creates a pale, moonlit atmosphere and a subdued conclusion.

The cycle was composed in 1990 at the suggestion of my son Martin, to whom it is also dedicated.

Bertold Hummel

Since the late 1980s, Bertold Hummel’s output has also included song cycles that depart from traditional piano accompaniment. An alternative to this is guitar accompaniment, which – within the German lieder tradition – was very popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Hummel employs this in his song cycle “Phantasus”, set to freely chosen poems from the collection of the same name by Arno Holz. Although the possibilities for polyphonic arrangement are drastically reduced on the guitar, Hummel adheres in principle to the structure of his piano songs. However, typical guitar techniques such as the rasgado (continuous arpeggiation with the fingernails, usually from top to bottom and back) are frequently found, for example at the beginning of the third song (“See, See, sonnigste See”). Holz’s artistic neo-Romanticism, with its Rococo nostalgia (his naturalistic modernisms are left aside), is captured musically by Hummel with a touch of humour, for example when, in the first song , relatively simple references to flowers are followed by a carefully crafted variation of the same musical motif. The instrumental introduction to this song , “In meinem schwarzen Taxuswald”, returns, full of significance, at the beginning of the final song , “In meinem grünen Steinwald”, rounding off the cycle. The ballad-like third song, “See, See, sonnigste See”, is rendered by Hummel with realistic humour, leading in the vocal part to glissandi and trills and even to that manner of speaking on suggested pitches first employed by Engelbert Humperdinck in the early version of his “Königskinder ”. But whilst the triads in the passage ‘wohnen die alten Götter’ in the second song (‘Aus weißen Wolken’) still seem ironic, when they reappear in the final song one gets the impression that the moon and the sun-drenched lake, the blue flowers and the harp are, after all, taken so seriously as a mood that the (once again open) conclusion in the C major sixth chord is convincing – all the more so as the note E resounds throughout the entire song (apart from the aforementioned instrumental prelude).

Wolfgang Osthoff ( in “Zu den Liedern Bertold Hummels”, Tutzing 1998)