Score and CD (or tape) on special sale from the Hire Library

Nachtlied was commissioned by the Harrogate Festival. Nachtlied is based on a poem by Goethe and two meditations by Rudolf Steiner, a Goethe scholar of note in his early years. The Goethe poem is “Wanderers Nachtlied”, familiar to musicians in Schubert’s sublime setting. Goethe wrote it sitting under an oak on a hill outside Weimar which was subsequently to become the site of Buchenwald. The designers of the concentration camp reverently preserved the tree. Steiner’s first meditation picks up the theme of rest from the Goethe poem and describes the soul’s night-journey to a light-filled cosmic ocean. The second meditation describes the journey back at dawn. The tape was made at City University, London, with the help of Walter Fabeck. The voice is of Jane Manning.