8.6 /10 1 Votes
Released March 10, 1992 Genre art song Label London, Argo Director Volker Schlöndorff Producer Eberhard Junkersdorf | 8.6/10 IMDb Recorded 1991 Length 53:48 Initial release 30 May 1992 Music director Michael Nyman Cinematography Igor Luther | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Michael Nyman Songbook
(1992) The Hairdresser's Husband
(1992) Cast Michael Nyman, Ute Lemper, John Harle Similar The Morals of Ruth Halbfass, Vertical Features Remake, The Candidate, The Cold Room, Six Days - Six Nights | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Michael Nyman Songbook is a collection of art songs by Michael Nyman based on texts by Paul Celan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud. It was recorded as an album with Ute Lemper in 1991, and again as a concert film in 1992, under the direction of Volker Schlöndorff, again with Ute Lemper, though many of the musicians had changed. The songs have been recorded by others and as instrumentals, and are published by Chester Music. The album has been issued by both London Records and Argo Records, though the covers are the same except for the logo.
Contents
The Texts
The texts are the poetry of Paul Celan in German, from the collections, Mohn und Gedächtnis (1952), Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1955), and Sprachgitter (1959), two letters and a 1787 Carnival riddle by Mozart in English for the segment by Jeremy Newsom of Artifax/BBC's Not Mozart titled Letters, Riddles and Writs, Ariel songs from The Tempest composed for Prospero's Books, and L'Orgie Parisienne, ou Paris se Repeuple by Rimbaud. All save the Mozart are performed in their original language.
The Music
The songs are officially written for "low female voice". For Six Celan Songs, Nyman specifically wrote the pieces for Lemper. "Corona" and "Blume" "introduce an eight-bar chord sequence derived from Chopin's Mazurka in A minor, op. 17 no. 4 (the introduction to which was used by Gorecki in his Symphony No. 3)." It was composed between May and July 1990. Nyman's mother passed on 7 June, while he was writing "Blume", and he dedicated the cycle to her memory. "I Am an Unusual Thing" "is based entirely on extracts from two of Haydn quartets" and is from the opera, Letters, Riddles and Writs. L'Orgie parisienne is an extract from La Traversée de Paris.
The Album
Performed by Michael Nyman, Ute Lemper, and the Michael Nyman Band.
Track listing
Six Celan Songs (Paul Celan)
Ariel Songs (Shakespeare)
10. I am an unusual thing (Mozart) – 5.18
L'Orgie Parisienne (Rimbaud)
Credits
The album contains only one letter by Mozart, which is musically contiguous with the riddle after the song.
The Film
The film was shot at the Musikhalle, Hamburg, 4 February 1992, before a live audience nearly filling the room to capacity. It includes scenes from such films as Alain Resnais's Night and Fog and Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth.
The film does not contain the "Ariel Songs", but includes an instrumental prelude, which is "Miranda" from Prospero's Books. It also includes a letter from Letters, Riddles and Writs.
The only cast credits on the film itself are to Ute Lemper and the Michael Nyman Band. The band members are credited (with Marjorie Dunn and Beverley Davison's names misspelled as above) in the order above in a booklet packaged with the videocasette and DVD. The DVD edition is coupled with Ute Lemper Chante Kurt Weill.