Proms 2018: Georg Friedrich Haas – the last minutes of inhumanity; Hannah Kendall – Verdala; Isabel Mundry – Gefallen; Luca Francesconi – We Wept (World Premières)
I haven’t listened to this yet – waiting for the right moment. You write:” Haas’ piece avoids ostensibly obvious statements as a means to convey a more authentic truth, exacerbated here by keeping from non-German-speaking audiences a translation of his text, taken from Karl Kraus’ The Last Days of Mankind.” I don’t know if he is really “keeping” a translation from his non-German-speaking audiences so much as not being able to find anyone who could render Kraus’s notoriously allusive and involved text in an English remotely faithful to the original. I don’t have my Kraus edition at hand, but if you send me the text used in the work I will have a go for the sake of all those hungry Haas freaks out there (HELLO!), barring any rights problems. I think there is a translation of the whole work, probably horrendously expensive…
Martin WalkerAugust 14, 2018 • 10:06 - 10:06
Forget my over-hasty previous comment: if you know the scene the text was derived from, just check http://www.thelastdaysofmankind.com/index.html
I had forgotten the existence of this site – blame my age…
5:4August 14, 2018 • 10:09 - 10:09
Hi Martin – yes, i provided a link to that site in my article! i take your point vis-a-vis the nature of Kraus’ text, but from the perspective of someone listening without access to the translation (which usually would be provided in a concert) it does seem to me that this is also part of Haas’ strategy, not even providing a provisional translation but instead letting the words sit within the music without the need to follow or parse them.
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I haven’t listened to this yet – waiting for the right moment. You write:” Haas’ piece avoids ostensibly obvious statements as a means to convey a more authentic truth, exacerbated here by keeping from non-German-speaking audiences a translation of his text, taken from Karl Kraus’ The Last Days of Mankind.” I don’t know if he is really “keeping” a translation from his non-German-speaking audiences so much as not being able to find anyone who could render Kraus’s notoriously allusive and involved text in an English remotely faithful to the original. I don’t have my Kraus edition at hand, but if you send me the text used in the work I will have a go for the sake of all those hungry Haas freaks out there (HELLO!), barring any rights problems. I think there is a translation of the whole work, probably horrendously expensive…
Forget my over-hasty previous comment: if you know the scene the text was derived from, just check http://www.thelastdaysofmankind.com/index.html
I had forgotten the existence of this site – blame my age…
Hi Martin – yes, i provided a link to that site in my article! i take your point vis-a-vis the nature of Kraus’ text, but from the perspective of someone listening without access to the translation (which usually would be provided in a concert) it does seem to me that this is also part of Haas’ strategy, not even providing a provisional translation but instead letting the words sit within the music without the need to follow or parse them.
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