»pour mes amis Tibor Kováč et Kent Nagano«

For solo violin and large orchestra
Premiere: Mai 26, 2002, SFB-Sendesaal, Berlin; cycle »Musik der Gegenwart« (Music of Today) durch Tibor Kováč and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Peter Hirsch
Duration: ca. 16 minutes
Score: ECA Nr. 11004 Score (Extract, Pdf)
Available through: Edition Contemp Art (Verlagsgruppe Hermann)
Goldschmiedgasse 10, A-1010 Wien
E-mail: sales{at}hermann.eu | tel: +43 / 1 / 534 62 40 | Fax: +43 / 1 / 534 62 67

A new version is in prepration.

Audio sample:

The work was written concurrently with Metropolitan Midnight Music op. 22d and Vanished Dreams op. 22c in 1992/93 immediately after the death of the composer's father. Compensating for grief over the loss of his father René Staar was seized by an almost frenzied need to compose. La Fontaine de Sang (the title is that of a sonnet in Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire), however, differs from the other two pieces in that it is inspired by the feelings Baudelaire allegorizes as seething of the blood, something the composer experienced vividly.

This image of a fountain of blood out of which the life-blood courses became the starting point for a composition built essentially as a concert piece in a sort of sonata form integrating a solo cadenza but without a grand orchestral introduction. The work makes a highly expressive statement and continues the series of important works in the development of his chord realignment theory which began in 1987 with … ich bin es, ohne dass es mir gleicht … op. 19.

Charles Baudelaire:
LA FONTAINE DE SANG

Il me semble parfois que mon sang coule à flots,
Ainsi qu’une fontaine aux rhythmiques sanglots.
Je l’entends bien qui coule avec un long murmure,
Mais je me tâte en vain pour trouver la blessure.

Àtravers la cité, comme dans un champ clos,
Il s’en va, transformant les pavés en îlots,
Désaltérant la soif de chaque créature,
Et partout colorant en rouge la nature.

J’ai demandé souvent à des vins captieux
D’endormir pour un jour la terreur qui me mine;
Le vin rend l’œil plus clair et l’oreille plus fine!

J’ai cherché dans l’amour un sommeil oublieux;
Mais l’amour n’est pour moi qu’un matelas d’aiguilles
Fait pour donner à boire à ces cruelles filles!

THE FOUNTAIN OF BLOOD

It sometimes seems to me as if my blood
Flowed like a rhythmic fountain's sobbing flood.
I hear it run with a long murmering sound,
But vainly do I try to find the wound.

Across the town, as through the lists, it flows,
Transforming the pavement to archipelagoes,
Slaking the thirst of every living creature,
And staining red the various forms of nature.

I have asked often the insidious
Wine to put to sleep my wasting fear;
Wine makes the ear more sharp, the eye more clear!

I have sought in love for an oblivious
Slumber. it's only a bed of needles whence pours
My blood to be drunken by the cruel whores!

Manuscript La Fontaine de Sang - 1 Original size

Manuscript La Fontaine de Sang - 24 Original size