Luogo e data di registrazione		Kirche Neumünster, Zürich (Svizzera) - 10-13 luglio 1971
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 104 - (1 lp) - durata 59' 53" - (p) 1972 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63443 2 - (1 cd) - durata 44' 58" - (c) 1991 - ADD
	Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26470 2 - (1 cd) - durata 44' 58" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

The German folksongs that have come down lo us from the sixteenth century take their subjects from but a few simple sectors of overyday life. The largest grouping of the songs consists of love songs in which certain fixed situations reappear constantly with but slight variation in pattern: songs of happy love come true, of unhappy love and the pain of lost or of disappointing love, plus the odd "Tagelieder" (songs at daybreak) portraying the forced parting of lovers in the morning after a night of love. It is with just this last, and highly popular, group that one can recognize (and find evidence most clearly for) one point that holds true for all folksonglike love songs: They were not - as has been a commonloy accepted notion since Christian Günther, Klopstock and young Goethe - the sublime artistic expression of a poet’s singularly individual experience with love, but rather the late echo of something that had long been "sung a-round", namely, the "Minnelied" of late courtly lyric poetry (of the thirteenth century in particular). The scenic settings so completely typical of the "Minnelied" were unendingly varied by ceaseless reshifting and regroupings. Only a few other areas of human experience can be cited as typical sources from which subjects were constantly drawn: hunting and the profession of - most usually - the composer of the song or the musician who performed it (and who was often the composer himself). Consequently, the names of the text writers are not generally known, understandably so since, after all, their formulations and situations followed welltrodden paths; nothing really new was being expressed, nor was there even the desire to produce such novelty. No nature poems are to be found in the lyrics of this period although several nature pictures were among the most popular scenic settings both in late medieval poems and in the folksongs derived from them. Elements of nature as such were still not given a specific place of their own in literary thought; they were looked upon simply as the framework in which man lived and was active. In songs, processes of nature were mentioned only to shed light upon the human situation depicted; events of human life and of nature - following a custom that was centuries old - were drawn into parallel relationships. Yet for us today, despite the stereotyped molds, all of this seems to have been accomplished with extreme charm. These origins and the fact that the folksong had its base in the uncontrived social and community life of the sixteenth century make it understandable that there can be no authentic wording of the texts, nor even a fixed number or arrangement of stanzas. As a result, certain texts - and in many case also the number of stanzas - in the versions employed on this recording differ from those found in folksong collections of the period. Where possible, attention is regularly called to parallel stanzas or songs in the two best known and most complete collections of the period: 1) - Georg Forster’s Frische teutsche Liedlein ("Fresh Little German Songs") first published in 1539, edit. by M. Elizabeth Marriage, found in Braune’s Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke des 16. und  17. Jahrhunderts ("New Printings of German Literary Works of the 16th and 17th Centuries"), Nos. 203-6; Halle, 1903. 2) - The Ambraser Liederbuch (Lb) of 1582, edit. by Joseph Bergmann, Stuttgart, 1845 (Reprint, Hildesheim, 1962). In addition comparisons are regularly made with the three volumes of Arnim-Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Wh), Heidelberg, 1806-8, in the new edition by Heinz Rölleke, Frankfurt, 1973, and the modern 2-volume collection Deutsche Volkslieder, Texte und Melodien (German Folksongs, Texts and Melodies), edited by Lutz Röhrich and Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (R-Br), Dusseldorf, 1965-67. Correct understanding of sixteenth century songs pre-supposes considerable knowledge of the historical language, especially since many of the archetypes of these folksongs went back into the Golden Age of Middle High German and many of the words and phrases were simply passed on in a set manner - and were perhaps not always understood even in the sixteenth century. For these reasons, both general and specific language notes, when considered essential for proper understanding of the song contents, are offered following a short general characterization of each song and reference to one of the collections listed above. Fritz Tschirch (Translation: E.D. Echols)
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"