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Schweinitz's first major composition since the end of his exclusive publishing agreement with Boosey & Hawkes is a score for a play (or Hörspiel ) by the Austrian poet Friederika Mayröcker. It is due to be recorded for radio in Berlin in March 2003, and later that month will be performed publicly in Berlin's Sophiensaal. More details to follow.

Patmos
The world premiere of Schweinitz's 'Azione musicale' Patmos was at the Munich Biennale on 28 April 1990. It attracted wide attention on account of the virtuoso production by Ruth Berghaus. Less attention was given to the conflicts between the production and the 'texts' - including the musical text, which found remarkably few admirers in the German press, while leaving a profound impression on some musicians and music listeners who were fortunate enough to attend the performances. There was no broadcast relay or acceptable recording. Arguably one of the more important dramatic works composed in Germany during the second half of the twentieth century, Patmos has had no further performance since the original Munich production.

The title Patmos is taken from the famous poem by Hölderlin. The text is the entire Revelation of St John the Divine, in the German of the Martin Luther Bible and (alternatively) in the English of the King James Authorised Version. The arrangement for the stage is by the Hölderlin scholar D E Sattler, who divides the figure of St John into two distinct roles. The communities St John is addressing from the island of Patmos, together with his spiritual and symbolic adversaries on the one hand and the heavenly host on the other, are sung, acted, danced, and mimed.

With characteristic modesty the composer maintained that his music is from first to last subservient to 'the word'. But that is true only in the sense that it is composed as a 'reading' of the text, almost in the natural speech tempo. It therefore denies itself the luxury of (post-)Romantic expression: never is there any lingering for conventionally contemplative effect, and hardly ever does the orchestra offer a commentary of its own. Yet the massive interlocking of many-faceted tonal, modal and non-tonal forms is compellingly dramatic in its progress towards the seventh and last of the 'Acts', a Utopian vision achieved in the teeth of the work's profound disquiet about the world we live in, and the future of the human race.

Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd

Website: http://www.wolfgangvonschweinitz.com

Email: schweinitz@plainsound.org

Material Copyright © 2002 David Drew.