Helena Winkelman

Foreigners

Fremdländler is a musical rendering of a famous story called Ds Totemügerli by Swiss writer Franz Hohler. The interprets should be like storytellers and incorporate as accurately as possible the atmospheres, movements and happenings in this ghost story. For that reason some of the fragments of the text are placed in score and parts. The translations though are on very shaky foundations because many of the words are invented and only the onomatopoetic intuition of the native swiss german dialect speaker gives some clues. Regardless: To play the piece well you will need these clues.

It all starts early in the morning when two mountaineers after having gotten drunk at the local pub start their way home and encounter some mountain spirits, called Totemügerli who one finds out in the end of the story are spirits of mountaineers who died.