Franz Schubert:
1] Der Wanderer (Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck), D 489

Samuel Barber:
from Hermit Songs op 29 (anonymus writers)
2] At Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, opus 29 no 1
3] The Monk and His Cat, opus 29 no 8
4] The Desire for Hermitage, opus 29 no 10

Jacques Ibert:
Chansons de Don Quichotte
5] Chanson du depart de Don Quichotte (Ronsard)
6] Chanson a Dulcinée (Arnoux)
7] Chanson du Duc (Arnoux)
8] Chanson der la Mort de Don Quichotte (Arnoux)

Hermann Reutter:
Drei Monologes Des Empedokles (Hölderlin)
9] In meine Stille kamst du
10] Euch ruf ich über das Gefild herein
11] Ha! Jupiter, Befreier!

Franz Schubert:
Gesänge des Harfners (Goethe) opus 12
12] Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt
13] Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß
14] An die Türen will ich schleichen

Maurice Ravel:
Don Quichotte a Dulcinée (Paul Morand)
15] Chanson romanesque
16] Chanson épique
17] Chanson ŕ boire

Charles Ives:
from “Paracelsus” (Browning)
18] Mirage (Rosetti)
19 Walt Whitman (Whitman)

Franz Schubert:
20] Totengräbers Heimweh (Craigher), D 842

A monologue is a conversation with oneself in its most genuine form. It is authentic emotion, an honest attempt to define what holds one inside one’s self-imposed limits – without contradiction, without listeners, without diversion from the essentials, without help from outside.

Questions fall over each other: is it still possible to ponder our own existence with peace of mind in an ever more networked world of dialogue? How authentic can we remain when we have easy access to all important information, often heaped upon us without our even asking? Where will we find our “monk’s cells”? Have we already become mirrors of these “other worlds”, consumers devoid of free will, with a predetermined behaviour model, incapable of distinguishing our own existence from the turmoil of the outside world?

“O Menschheit, o Leben, was soll’s, o, was soll’s?

Grabe aus, scharre zu, Tag und Nacht keine Ruh!”

“O mankind, O life! what is it all for?

Dig out, scrape in! Day and night, no peace!”

Monologue as meditation, or at least as a path leading there, as a sometimes desperate attempt to move closer to the core of things through the “noise of words”: that is what this CD should be about. One rarely finds answers. Questions pile up and thicken, until their rhetoric becomes unbearable for the protagonist and the only answer remains: