Hugues Dufourt

An Schwager Kronos

Written for piano, this piece renews with the fantastic essence of the Lied. The Lied, as Marcel Beaufils wrote, 'attests to an essential apprehension which is felt by an entire Germanic country, perhaps only half Christianized, and which endlessly draws on the pagan roofs of its soul'. Trees, ponds, dock and fog, vast stretches of heather: all the signs of the Lied conspire in the metaphysical landscape of the heath, It is in this framework that the strangest encounters take place. According to Goethe, Chronos, the sinister postillion, leads souls to Pluto, following a mad flight. As a matte of fact, Schubert, the dramatist of the forest and waters, set this poem to music. Elsewhere: a refusal of history ? Nostalgia of origins ? A longing for the titanic spirit ? From 1770 to 1870 - landscape poetry was one of the major registers of German lyricism. Heine, the most brilliant poet of the time recalls that this era was dominated by Metternich and that he always revealed himself through singular affinities between religions consolation and absolute power. Be it the ultimate expression of a regret or resignation, the Lied remains no less a song of experience, the chaotic journey of the wanderer and his double, Brother Chronos.Hugues DufourtTranslated by John Tyler Tuttle