Sebald-Inspired Music Comes to Brooklyn May 13, 2023

Timeline for the presentation of Michael Hersch’s sew me into a shroud of leaves at the 2019 Wien Modern Festival.

I’m sorry for the late notice, but I just learned about this event, which happens tomorrow in Brooklyn at the performance space National Sawdust, beginning at 9:00 A.M.

From their website:

Michael Hersch brings the U.S. premiere of his sprawling 11-hour new music cycle sew me into a shroud of leaves to National Sawdust for a powerful exploration of endurance. The three-part cycle, composed over 15 years between 2001-2016, finds inspiration in poets Christopher Middleton, W.G. Sebald, and Marius Kociejowski. The ardent piece’s first and last parts are written for solo piano, while the central section is scored for horn and cello. Join us for the U.S. premiere of the work that Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called “a maximal experience that was absolutely overwhelming.”

About Michael Hersch

A composer of “uncompromising brilliance” (The Washington Post) whose work has been described by The New York Times as “viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music … claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity,” Michael Hersch is widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation. Recent events and premieres include productions of his opera Poppaea at the Wien Modern and ZeitRäume Basel Festivals, his Violin Concerto, commissioned by Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, at the Lucerne and the Avanti Festivals. His acclaimed two-act monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter has had performances in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C. Recent commissions include his elegy I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals, and his work Agatha, which had premiere performances in Bern and Geneva as part of Hersch’s residency with the Camerata Bern. Major projects in 22/23 include those for Ensemble Phoenix Basel, and a new opera for Sarah Maria Sun, Schola Heidelberg and Ensemble Musikfabrik.

About Mariel Roberts 

American cellist Mariel Roberts is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances which seethe with “excruciating intensity” (The Whole Note), but as a “fearless explorer” in her field (Chicago Reader). Her ravenous appetite for collaboration and experimentation as an interpreter, improvisor, and composer have helped create a body of work which bridges avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music.

About Jason Hardink

“A fearless interpreter of large-scale piano works both modern and historical, pianist Jason Hardink’s recent debut at Weill Recital Hall was lauded for its audacious programming and pianism demonstrating “abandon and remarkable clarity” and a “capacity for tenderness and grace” (The New York Times).

About Jacob Rhodebeck

Jacob Rhodebeck is a pianist known for his tremendous command of the instrument and his enthusiasm for performing new and little known music.  Recently, Mr. Rhodebeck’s performance of Michael Hersch’s 3-hour solo piano work, The Vanishing Pavilions was described as “astounding” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and “a searing performance” (The New York Times).

About Jamie Hersch

Jamie Hersch has been widely lauded for his artistry and virtuosic command in both the standard and contemporary repertoire. An active soloist and chamber artist, he has performed with many ensembles around the world.  With cellist Daniel Gaisford, he gave the world premiere of Michael Hersch’s Last Autumn in Philadelphia. It was selected by The Philadelphia Inquirer as among the Best in Classical Music of that year. He currently serves as Associate Principal Horn with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

There is more about the various inspirations for this piece at Hersch’s website.

Update on Will Self’s Upcoming Talk on Sebald

Two days ago I posted that the writer Will Self is to deliver a talk called “The Ghost of Future Past: W.G. Sebald and the Trauma of Modernity” at 7 PM on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at St George’s German Lutheran Church, Whitechapel, London, with Rick Jones as the event’s host. At that time, The Article said the event would be both live and on zoom while the church’s website said the event is by Zoom only. I advised “Proceed with caution.” On December 4, Rick Jones clarified via email that tickets are to attend the talk in person in St George’s German Lutheran Church. Anyone wishing to watch via Zoom may apparently request to do so via the Eventbrite ticket site. Tickets are £5.

I wish I could be there.

Will Self to Talk on Sebald Dec. 20, 2022

https://mobile.twitter.com/wself

The online platform The Article, which refers to itself as “a troll-free zone. Entertaining exchanges. Civilised conversation,” has announced that the writer Will Self will deliver a talk called “The Ghost of Future Past: W.G. Sebald and the Trauma of Modernity” at 7 PM on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at St George’s German Lutheran Church, Whitechapel, London E1 8EB. Rick Jones hosts the event. Tickets are £5. The Article says the event is both live and on zoom. But the church’s website says the event is by Zoom only. On December 4, Rick Jones clarified via email that tickets are to attend the talk in person in St George’s German Lutheran Church. Anyone wishing to watch via Zoom may request to do so via the Eventbrite ticket site.

St. George’s German Lutheran Church is the oldest surviving German Church in Britain. The church closed for regular worship in 1996 when it was taken into care by The Historic Chapels Trust. Although it is still occasionally used for church services by the German community from London and the surrounding area, it is now principally used for concerts, lectures, meetings, and a place of historical study. St George’s German Lutheran Church is a unique testament to common heritage shared by two nations, both in the past and in the present.

Will Self has a long history of writing and speaking about Sebald. He gave the 2009 Sebald Lecture, organized by the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, titled “Absent Jews and Invisible Executioners: W G Sebald and the Holocaust.” (That lecture can be heard here on SoundCloud.) More recently, he led a segment of BBC Radio’s Channel 4 Archive on 4 progam. “In the company of Sebald biographer Carole Angier and former friend, poet Stephen Wells, Self moves through the Sebaldian landscape of Southwold, Liverpool Street and the East End whilst exploring the archive devoted to one of the truly great writers of the late 20th Century.” (That program can be heard here.)

Self’s forthcoming book from Grove Press/Grove Atlantic, Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, contains “a lengthy, dark, autobiographical piece on W.G. Sebald and the role of the Holocaust.”

“Explosion of Words” Exhibition in London

Hannes Schüpbach, “Explosion of Words,” detail of image 11 with words from Stephen Watts’ poem ‘For My Friend,
Max Sebald’ (Ancient Sunlight, London: Enitharmon, 2014/2021) © Hannes Schüpbach

Since one of the cornerstones of Vertigo is exploring poetry that includes photographs, a friend brought to my attention the current exhibition in London at Bow Arts’ Nunnery Gallery, “Explosion of Words,” a cinematic photo installation and imaginary library of modern poetry in translation. Here’s what the organizer’s webpage says about it:

“Explosion of Words” is a cinematic photo installation, extending frieze-like over 30 metres of the Nunnery Gallery’s gothic walls, celebrating the power of language. The exhibition is the culmination of Swiss artist Hannes Schüpbach’s (b. 1965) response to the lived spaces of east London-based poet and language activist Stephen Watts (b. 1952), who works between extensive research on poetry and his own contributions as a poet and co-translator from many languages.  
Approximately 1600 pages of Watts’ ongoing Bibliography of Modern Poetry in English Translation will be mounted directly onto the gallery’s four-metre-high walls as a background for Schüpbach’s space-spanning photo installation, creating a cosmos of world poetry. Watts’ Bibliography, which is 40 years in the making, will be transformed into a physical experience, creating a ‘storehouse of language’, reflecting Watts’ own passion for poetry in every tongue. In the nave space of the gallery, an excerpt of Schüpbach’s new silent film Essais (2020), with Stephen Watts, will also be on display. 
Watts’ Bibliography opens up perspectives onto the rich wealth of poetry that has been, and still is being, written or performed out of many different histories and environments, as well as exploring the many cultural issues involved in translation.
A two-part artists’ publication has been published to coincide with the exhibition: Hannes Schüpbach: Explosion of Words. Dedicated to Stephen Watts, with an essay by Jo Catling and Stephen Watts: Explosion of Words, 19 Poems, with German translations by Hannes Schüpbach (192 pages, 19.5 × 26 cm, designed by Raphael Drechsel, GREAT, published by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna), available to buy at the gallery.

PLEASE NOTE! Panel talk April 7.

Explosion of Words | ‘An Imaginary Library’: Modern Poetry and Translation Thursday 7 April, 6.30-7.45pm, Queen Mary University of London, £5/free for concessions Join a panel of speakers including Stephen Watts, Hannes Schüpbach, Jo Catling, Chris McCabe and Nisha Ramayya as they dig into the significance of Watts’ Bibliography and its crucial place in a full consideration of modern poetry and translation. (Booking is recommended as gallery space is limited. Book all events online at: bowarts.org/whats-on)

For more information on the exhibition, publication, and programming, check out the bowarts website.

The book Hannes Schüpbach: Explosion of Words contains poems by Watts and photographs by Schüpbach.

Double-page spread from Hannes Schüpbach: Explosion of Words. Photographs © Hannes Schüpbach.

New BBC Radio Program on Sebald

The BBC radio program Archive on 4 has a new episode “Self on Sebald,” narrated by writer Will Self, which can now be heard here for approximately the coming year. I listened to it and thought it was really engaging and had a terrific soundscape. The program was released on December 11, 2021, on the twentieth anniversary of Sebald’s death. Here’s the description from the program’s website:

WG Sebald created extraordinary fictions that hovered between the real and the imagined. With images and simple, yet fantastically powerful writing he told stories of loss, exile and loneliness that spoke to his own personal life. A German living in England, writing in his native tongue, haunted by history and existing in two worlds. That of his fatherland which had exterminated its Jewish populations and made a compact with memory and truth. And an England that had firebombed German cities during the war. The second silence in post war German writing and thought. In works like Austerlitz, where the burden of memory and forgetting unhinges its central character, a former Kindertransport refugee, the past silts up before breaking through in unexpected ways. The Emigrants delicately portrays the lives in exile and return of German Jewish survivors whereas The Rings of Saturn evokes landscape and the past in unsettling yet subtle ways

Will Self has long been drawn to the multi-layered worlds of WG Sebald’s fiction. Here, in the company of Sebald biographer Carole Angier and former friend, poet Stephen Watts, Self moves through the Sebaldian landscape of Southwold, Liverpool Street and the East End whilst exploring the archive devoted to one of the truly great writers of the late 20th Century.

The Great Flood of 1953

Resonance FM has another intriguing radio program coming up tomorrow night, October 27 from 8:00 to 9:00 pm, London time: “The Great Tide: Flooding, Landscape and Memory. The Great Flood of 1953.” That year, the combination of a high spring tide and a storm over the North Sea caused a surge to sweep across the East Coast, creating the worst natural disaster in Britain of the 20th century, in which 307 people lost their lives in England and over 1,800 people in the Netherlands. It also produced one of the great works of English social history, The Great Tide by Hilda Grieve, a 900-page tome that tells the story of the flood disaster in Essex. In this program, Patrick Bernard discusses The Great Tide with writer and social historian Ken Worpole, Edward Platt, author of The Great Flood, and Anne Johnson, a storyteller who runs Everyday Magic, a London-based charity which sends storytellers into state primary schools, and who lived on Canvey Island at the time of the flood. The program will be re-aired Wednesday 10:00 am.]

Sebald referred to the “catastrophic incursions of the sea” that happened century after century on the English coastline facing the Netherlands when he wrote about Dunwich in The Rings of Saturn.

Resonance FM is a 24/7 HD radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world. At a later date, the program will be made available for listening on Mixcloud and I will post that information.

Last year, Resonance aired a two-part program “Walking with Sebald.” Links to listen to it can be found here.

“Walking with Sebald” Programs Online

At the Kindertransport Memorial, London

My previous post alerted readers to a radio program called “Walking with Sebald,” aired online by London radio station 104.4 Resonance FM on two nights in February. This fascinating program is now available to listen to anytime through the links below. To listen to either episode, just click on the “Play” triangles.

Novo Cemetery, London

“Patrick Bernard follows in the footsteps of W. G. Sebald and his eponymous character Austerlitz as he explores the East End of London with poet Stephen Watts (a friend of ‘Max’ Sebald who accompanied him on many of his walks). They are joined by Nadia Valman and David Anderson from Queen Mary University of London as they visit many of the locations in the novel to uncover the layers of history hidden beneath the surface of the city and Sebald’s text. In the first episode Patrick and his guests walk from Exchange Square behind Liverpool Street Station – where Austerlitz first arrives to London on the Kindertransport – to Brick Lane where Stephen reads a poem dedicated to Altab Ali and Bill Fishman.

There are more photographs of the walk here.

“Walking with Sebald” Broadcast

The London radio station 104.4 Resonance FM is about to broadcast a two part series called “Walking with Sebald.” Part one will go on at 8:00 PM London time Tuesday on the program called “Clear Spot”and will repeat Wednesday at 10:00 AM.

Walking with Sebald: Austerlitz and the East End (Part 1). In this two-part programme Patrick Bernard follows in the footsteps of W. G. Sebald and his eponymous character Austerlitz as he explores the East End of London with poet Stephen Watts (a friend of ‘Max’ Sebald who accompanied him on many of his walks). They are joined by Nadia Valman and David Anderson from Queen Mary University of London as they visit many of the locations in the novel to uncover the layers of history hidden beneath the surface of the city and Sebald’s text. In the first episode Patrick and his guests walk from Exchange Square behind Liverpool Street Station – where Austerlitz first arrives to London on the Kindertransport – to Brick Lane where Stephen reads a poem dedicated to Altab Ali and Bill Fishman. Follow our progress at walkingwithsebald.wordpress.com/. Sound recorded by Milo Thesiger-Meacham and photography by Karen Lacey-Holder. [Repeated Wednesday 10am.]

Part two will be broadcast at 8:00 PM Thursday and rebroadcast Friday morning at 10:00 AM. At some point in the future, the two broadcasts will become available to listen elsewhere. I’ll post details when I know more. It’s easy to listen. Just click on the button that says “Listen Live” and the Resonance FM radio app will open right up on your screen.

Be patient! The Resonance FM website loads very slowly.

W.G. Sebald Literature Prize & Conference Announced in the Allgäu, Where He Grew Up

The stele with the relevant text from Vertigo as seen on the Sebaldweg, near Wertach, Germany, birthplace of W.G. Sebald.

The Allgäu, the Bavarian region southwest of Munich where W.G. Sebald was born and raised, is extending its effort to claim its native son who fled to England. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu and later lived in Sonthofen, two towns which, along with nearby Kempten in Allgäu, have launched the Deutsche Sebald-Gesellschaft, or German Sebald Society. A few years after his death, the Allgäu region established the Sebaldweg, or Sebald Walk, a 12-kilometer hiking trail that somewhat follows the route that Sebald describes in the “Ritorno in Patria” section of Vertigo, in which the Sebald character returns to the town of his birth.

Now, the German Sebald Society has announced an annual Sebald Literature Prize of 10,000 EUR for a longer prose text in German on the subject of “Gedächtnis und Erinnerung” (shall we say “memory and recollection”?). German-speaking authors from around the world may submit to the competition by April 30, 2020. The prize is endowed, which implies that it will be awarded annually into the future.

In addition, during November 20-22 of this year, there will be a conference in Sonthofen on the topic of “Nebelflecken und das Unbeobachtete” (“nebulae and the unobserved”), at which time the Sebald Literature Prize will be awarded. The papers of the conference will apparently be published.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Theater in Kempten is going to stage “Die Ausgewanderten – vier lange Erzählungen” or “The Emigrants – Four Long Stories,” a dramatization of Sebald’s 1992 book, with eight performances between March 5-27.

What would Sebald have thought of all of this?

The actors from the Theater in Kempten production: Julia Jaschke, Annette Wunsch, Christian Kaiser, Hans Piesbergen. Photo © Birgitta Weizenegger.

Sebald-Inspired String Quartet To Be Played in Brooklyn Dec. 5

Contemporary American composer/musician Elizabeth Brown’s string quartet Just Visible in the Distance will be part of the Interpretations program at Roulette in Brooklyn Thursday, December 5 at 8:00 PM. It will be played by the Momenta Quartet, to whom the piece is dedicated. If you can’t make the concert, you can watch them play the fifteen and a half minute piece on Brown’s website. Brown says this about her composition:

Just Visible in the Distance (2013) consists of intuitively assembled small movements, each flowing into the next. Persistent musical material from some of my earlier pieces resurfaces often. The title is from W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, a book I love and have read many times.

That night’s event also includes compositions by Frances White, performances by baritone/narrator Thomas Buckner, and a video/sculpture installation by artist Lothar Osterburg. More information can be found here. Roulette is located at 509 Atlantic Avenue (Entrance on the Corner of Third Avenue; Accessible Entrance on Atlantic Ave).