Love, solitude and human transience: these timeless themes pervade the seemingly simple, folkloristic tone of the sixteen lieder in Robert Schumann’s famous song cycle Dichterliebe with poems by Heinrich Heine. These lieder are the tonal realisation of the imagination of a disjointed soul – an enigmatic soul singing of his love, leaving us unclear as to whether this was a genuine event in the past or merely a dream.

Schumann’s lieder in his cycle are each self-contained, whereas the sixteen songs are featured in my work as individual islands woven organically into a larger, newly created composition. Schumann’s harmonies and melodies form the basis of my work, acting as a wellspring for my tonal stream. All Heine’s texts and Schumann’s melodic lines are retained, although certain text passages are repeated or given new focal points. Here everything remains in a state of flux: a tonal stream of the subconscious. Accompanied by associative visualisation, my work does not narrate a chronological story, but unexpectedly opens individual windows in the human soul. Christian Jost