Friederike Mayröcker Requiem für Ernst Jandl
Scenic melodrama by Lesch Schmidt (*1957) based on the text of the same title by Friederike Mayröcker (*1924)
In German
Duration of performance approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Print programme (PDF)
Lesch Schmidt, Music
Hermann Beil, Stage Adaptation
Dagmar Manzel
Lesch Schmidt, Piano
Nikolai Tunkowitsch, Violin
Alexander Rindberger, Double bass, Tuba
Dirko Juchem, Flute, Alto saxophone, Baritone saxophone
Katharina Ernst, Percussion
Christoph Keintzel, Sound
The poet’s voice, the actress singing, music from the piano, violin, double bass, tuba, saxophone and percussion and the beautiful, clear faces of Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl come together in a scenic composition which is a true melodrama, where mourning is tempered with happiness, pain with joy and music with poetry. Lesch Schmidt combines his jazz-inspired music with the wonderful voice of Friederike Mayröcker, to which Dagmar Manzel’s response of hovering melismas and powerful singing creates a ‘piercing focus’.
Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl lived their lives together for almost five decades: ‘Ernst Jandl was such an open person… He never lied to me. He told me everything which was happening inside him. Yet to me he remained an enormous secret.’ Friederike Mayröcker’s text mourning her ‘companion with hand and heart’, Requiem für Ernst Jandl, published in 2001 one year after Jandl’s death, is a musical monologue in the truest sense of the word, which tells us of the reality of life and evokes the reality of love.
Hermann Beil
(Translation: David Tushingham)