Luogo e data di registrazione		Bürgerbräu. München (Germania) - 21-23 & 27-29 dicembre 1970
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Thomas Binkley
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 101 - (1 lp) - durata 44' 58" - (p) 1972 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63069 2 - (1 cd) - durata 44' 58" - (c) 1989 - ADD
	Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26467 2 - (1 cd) - durata 44' 58" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

Just as the period of medieval German songpoetry had begun around 1200 with the outstanding figure of Walther von der Vogelweide, it ended with a second great creative talent, the South Tyrolean knight Oswald von Wolkenstein, who was of equal significance both as a poet and as a composer. But while we know very little with certainty about Walthers life or actual music compositions, quite a lot has come down to us on Oswald. In the history of German poetry he was the first great individualist to instill, while still in the “Autumn of the Middle Ages”, old and new forms of poetry and music with the events and experiences of his own personal life. Thus we are provided some information on his youth. He was born between 1376 and 1378, a member of a noble family of Villanders (situated just above Klausen-on-Eisack) - his father was the first to assume the name of Wolkenstein which he took from a family residence in Gröden Valley. Looking back when he was almost forty years old, Oswald tells  us in his song “Es fügt sich" (Record No. 1) how he as a lad of ten - quite likely following a custom of the feudal society of those days - started out, probably in the service ofa knight, on an adventurous journey that lasted ten years and took him all over Eastern Europe and the bordering areas in Asia. Around 1400, we find him at home once again. Our documented knowledge on him, which also dates from this time and grew tremendously through the years, both supplements and confirms the dates and events of his highly adventure - some life as told to us in his songs. During the very next two years, 1401 and 1402, he accompanied King Rupprecht on travels to Italy where he is certain to have come into direct contact with the magnificent “Trecento“ style of Italian song-writing. Only a few years earlier the greatest master of this style, the blind composer Francesco Landino of Florence, had died. To one of his songs Oswald was soon to give new words (contrafactum) and revise the melody as well. (For details see Die Musikforschung No. 17, 1964 p. 393.) It was also during this time that Oswa|d’s turbulent love affair began with Sabine Hausmann, the married daughter of a Bressanona citizen named Jäger. The affair lasted for decades and affected Oswald deeply. At the urging of his “lady love“ Oswald made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1409, from which he did not return until the next year (a votive relief picturing him as a pilgrim has still been preserved on the outer wall of the cloisters at the Bressanona Cathedral). One ofthe songs written during the pilgrimage was the prayer-like “Der oben swebt“ (No. 4), which ranks in intensity and direct impact as high as any works of its kind in the world. The following three love-songs were also composed during this first blossom of songs and apparently refer to Sabine Hausmann: “Ach senleiches leiden“ (No. 7) that is perhaps the simplest and stylistically oldest twopart song that Wolkenstein ever wrote, “Du ausserweltes“ (No. 8) in which the melody is accompanied by two instruments, and “Fröhlich zärtlich“ (No. 11), a “Tagelied“ full of longing and with a lively accompaning voice above the melody. In 1415 and 1416 as a “diener und hofgesinde“ (servant and court follower) of King Sigmund, in whose service Oswald later was often to be found, he undertook a great journey to the Southwest (as far as Marocco) and through France where he gained first-hand knowledge of French songs and song styles. It is clearly in this light that we must view the song “der mai mit lieber zal“ (No. 6) in which the text and melody (with bird imitations) of the Frenchman Jean Vaillant (c. 1369) have been set in the mountain forest of Oswald`s native South Tyrol. We can only guess why he never married Sabine after Hausmann died in 1409. At any rate, in 1417, Oswald married Margarete von Schwangau who was of a noble Swabian family and became the “Gret“ in many of his later songs and also the mother of his seven children. It was at this point that Oswald’s creative powers were at their height. “Stand auff, Maredel!" (No. 5) is a dialogue between a maid found asleep with her lover in bed (soprano) and a peasant woman who wakes her to urge her to get up for work (lower voice); each voice (while being sung) is accompanied by a separate instrument. In the Tagelied “Wach auff“ (No. 9) the accompaning instrument plays above the melody, in part in ltalianate movement; “Kum libster man“ (No. 12) is again a dialogue with the melody of the lower voice in the modern (in part imitative) style. These and other such “Meistergesänge“ stem from this productive period that, moreover, was rich in stirring events that had a profound effect on his life. Thus evidence of the disreputable trading practices in Tyrol is provided by what is perhaps his best known and most frequently published song “Nu huss!" (No. 3); it depicts the wild - but for the three Wolkenstein brothers, fortunate - outcome of the siege of Burg Greiffenstein (a castle situated between Bolzano and Meran on the north slope of the Etsch Valley) in 1418, and reflects in word and tone the mixed mood of desparation and firm belief in victory in a way that can hardly be surpassed. By that time, however, the greatest calamity of his life had drawn nearer. An inheritance dispute with the Jäger family had smouldered ever since 1407, when Oswald had settled in the castle Burg Hauenstein-on-the-Schlern just above Kastelruth (now a ruin). Wolkenstein, showing the violent and unjust side of his nature, refused to recognize their claims to Hauenstein - perhaps, in the interest of his own family, he could not recognize the Jägers' claims. In 1421, while unarmed and ostensibly on a pilgrimage - at the urging of Sabine Hausmann (with whom his affair continued even through years of his marriage) - he was lured into a trap, captured and tortured, so that for a long time he was able to walk only with a crutch. In the light of this situation we must view the song “Es nahet gen der vasennacht" (No. 2) in which the tortured poet, lying chained and in pain while the riotous celebration of Shrove Tuesday is in progress outside, gives himself up to the wild sarcasm of having to make love to a crutch (see also below). After temporary release and two subsequent periods of imprisonment, to which we owe a number of his most serious and moving songs, peace of sorts was finally reached with the Jägers in 1427 (Sabine had died by then). From that time on, the poet’s life became comparatively quiet, at least as far as was allowed by the continual disputes in which the restless knight constantly became involved. Of his many travels the last one of major significance took him at the age of fiftyfive to Upper Italy. The very realistic song “Wer die ougen“ (No. 10), one of his most modern two-part compositions, tells of the increase in prices there and plays on the experiences of his travelling companions and others along the way. It was probably during this trip that he allowed an Italian painter to make a portrait of him. He later used the picture as the frontispiece to the second edition of his “Collected Works", i. e., Manuscript “B” (now in Innsbruck), the major part of which was completed in the same year (1432). Seven years earlier, between his first and second imprisonments, Oswald had his first luxurious manuscript made (Codex "A", now in Vienna). During a stay in Meran, he died on 2 August 1445, at an age of about seventy, and was buried in the Augustine monastery Neustift near Bressanona. Although written material on Oswald has greatly increased during the course of time, his actual historical significance in literature and music has just recently been better understood. This is also true of the one-part songs that he wrote. We now know Oswald as the father of the "individual song", that is, of the song in which both text and melody were written to fit only the one textual content and in such a way that word and tone present that content as clearly as possible, especially together with Oswald’s highly vital and dramatic manner of performance. In the song of the captured and tortured poet during “vasennacht“ (No. 2), the dramatic density created by fast following rhymes together with short, throbbing particles of melody brings the gruesome love scene to life for the listener with more immediacy than the colourless melodiescustomary throughout the Middle Ages possibly could have (more will be found on this subject in the Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, Vol. 47, 1972, No. 1, also with a more detailed discussion of the Shrove-Tuesday song; for a list of important literature up to 1964, see Burghart Wachinger’s excellent little book Oswald von Wolkenstein - Eine Auswahl aus seinen Liedern, Ebenhausen-near-Munich). Yet a position of historical importance must also be given Oswald inthe sector of polyphonic song composition. In quantity alone, his nearly forty polyphonic songs- most of which (like his “individual” songs) were brought forth during his main creative period from c. 1416 to the time of his imprisonments - represent the first major contribution to contrapuntal music to be found in Germany. Moreover, the old indigenous style (extremely plain setting by singing or playing over the melody) experienced further development, and German song composition,specifically, was happily enriched by the introduction of elements taken from Romanic (especially Italian) songwriting that at the time was superior to the German (the borrowed elements, however, were given a native German cast, for the melody was usually assigned to the lower voice). Thus after Oswald the stage was set on which, toward 1500, Germany’s first bloom of the art of contrapuntal song was to unfold. Bruno Stäblein (Translation: E.D. Echols)
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"