Das Ende eines Wintermärchens

Das Ende eines Wintermärchens (The End of a Winter’s Tale) takes its title from the third part of Hans-Jürgen Sybergergs mega-film “ein Film aus Deutschland” (1977).The film that has no clear plot or chronology , instead, each part explores one particular topic with the third part exploring the holocaust and the ideology behind it. Rather than devise a spectacle in the past tense, by attempting to simulate unrepeatable reality or showing a photographic document, this is a sort of spectacle in the present tense – “adventures in the head”. Reality can only be grasped indirectly – seen reflected in a mirror, staged in the theater of the mind.

The music should however not be misinterpreted as crudely illustrative, some (more or less) musical (symbolic) references are made; like beginning and closing all parts with a silent lonely child, an ironic mock of the complexity of the subject presented as something simple and also evoking symbolism of melancholy which musically is referred to by the, seemingly simple, beginning and ending on one note (G and E respectively). This also acts as a dramatic form of the piece, building an arc from simplicity – complexity – simplicity in its use of material.

Das Ende eines Wintermärchens is the third part in cycle I from the work “synthetic fragments”.