Zitat von Wolfgang Kaercher am 13. März 2022, 19:03 Uhr

Hallo

Für den Roman „Ein Todesfall in der Familie“ erhielt James Agee 1958 posthum den Pulitzer Preis. Teil der Erzählung, sozusagen ein Vorwort, ist “Knoxville 1915“, das er bereits früher verfasst hatte. Hier beschreibt Agee die Zeit kurz bevor sein Vater, Whitman Tyler, 1915 bei einem Autounfall ums Leben kam. Agee war 6 Jahre alt.

 

Als kleiner Junge liegt er mit Eltern und Onkel im Gras und lauscht den Geräuschen um ihn herum. Mit dem Gebet „Möge Gott mein Volk, meinen Onkel, meine Tante, meine Mutter, meinen guten Vater segnen…“ wird der sechsjährige zu Bett gebracht.

 

Samuel Barber wurde 1938 in der Zeitschrift Partisan Review auf das Prosagedicht aufmerksam und vertonte Teile daraus im Jahr 1947. Die lyrische Rhapsodie war eine Auftragskomposition des Dirigenten Serge Koussevitzly und der Sängerin Eleanor Stober, die das Stück 1948 uraufführten.

 

Barber empfand Parallelen zu den Schilderungen Agees in seinem eigenen Leben.

“Ich hatte Mr. Agees Schreiben immer bewundert und dieses Prosagedicht hat mich besonders beeindruckt, weil der Sommerabend, den er in seiner Südlichen Heimatstadt beschreibt, mich so sehr an ähnliche Abende erinnerte, als ich ein Kind zu Hause war.“

 

Aaron Copland hätte sich gewünscht, er hätte das Werk zuerst entdeckt, bemerkte dann aber: „Es ist genauso gut, dass es so passiert ist, wie es passiert ist, sonst hätten wir Sams schöne Partitur nicht.“

Ursprünglich komponierte Barber „Knoxville 1915“ für Stimme und Orchester. Später überarbeitete er es für kleines Kammerorchester und Solostimme.

 

Knoxville 1915

It has become the time of evening
when people sit on their porches,
rocking gently and talking gently
and watching the street
and the standing up
into their sphere of possession of the trees,
of birds’ hung havens, hangers.
People go by; things go by.
A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt;
a loud auto; a quiet auto;
people in pairs, not in a hurry,
scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually,
the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk,
the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan:
stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan
and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past,
the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks;
the iron whine rises on rising speed;
still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell;
rises again, still fainter, fainter, lifting, lifts, faints forgone: forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew.
Now is the night one blue dew,
my father has drained,
now he has coiled the hose.
Low on the length of lawns,
a frailing of fire who breathes …
Parents on porches: rock and rock.
From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.
On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts.
We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there …
They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet,
of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.
The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near.

All my people are larger bodies than mine, …
with voices gentle and meaningless like the voice of sleeping birds.
One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are, all on this earth;
and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth,
lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;
and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed.
Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her:
and those receive me, who quietly treat me,
as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:
but will not, no ,will not, not now, not ever;
but will not ever tell me who I am.

 

Hier die Aufnahme mit Measha Brueggergosman, die vom Manitoba Chamber Orchestra unter Roy Goodman begleitet wird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0QWI9kZVeY

 

Gruß

Wolfgang