Viktor Ullmann

Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke

Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke obviously is the last work outlined by Viktor Ullmann in the concentration camp ofTheresienstadt. Other than with the two symphonies developing from the piano sonatas Nos. 5 and 7, Ullmann apparently thought of an orchestral melodrama first, it was only later that the note for recitant and orchestra or piano was added. This version of the work is known to be performed several times in Theresienstadt. Only the first piece had been orchestrated by Ullmann himself, but he had written down the essentials of the orchestration in the hardly decipherable manuscript in great detail. Ullmann chose 12 sections from the prose work by Rainer Maria Rilke, shortening the plot sensibly. Except for the elimination of some sentences which refer to the rose-petal episode and which are incomprehensible without the framework plot, the borrowed texts are unabridged. According to an instruction by Ullmann in the autograph, the text indicated above the staves is only roughly coincident with the music.