Reliquien

I was in the middle of a recording project featuring Franz Schubert’s complete symphonies and other orchestral works, when I received a request from Anna Lucia Richter asking if I could compose a companion piece for Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock. I was inspired by the movingly simple yet profoundly mysterious musical text Schubert had published by Robert Schumann under the title Reliquien [Relics], and a composition in three sections was born which oscillates between recitative-like sections and expansive ariosos. The beginning of Schubert’s enigmatic funeral march Franz Schuberts Begräbnis- Feyer [Franz Schubert’s funeral ceremony] for nine winds, written when Schubert was only 16, wanders like a phantom as a tonal shadow through the score. Heinz Holliger