Martin-Christoph Dieterich: Diabelli Contest 2016

“Do dar niwiht ni was” (Wessobrunn Prayer)


The words of the 'Wessobrunn Prayer' express something that needs to exceed our imagination, because we are part of the world, namely the non-existence of the world.

My sympathies to the linguistic structure of the beginning. It is to elicit the essence of negation, which at the same time the negated as a concept (Do not think about ...). The text enumerates what was not there and just takes us that, which is before our eyes, what is there.

This section of the lyrics I score therefore in twofold - first, the focus is on the enumerated things, the tangible material world, then on the unimaginable nothing.
Doubling also represents the language: Old High German fascinates in its distance, the strangeness, the mystery compared to the usual New High German. The content is indeed partially rather to anticipate than to understand. How similar or different are the words and sounds in both forms of speech?

The actual creed (Enti do was ...) remains in my scoring in conceptually sung Old High German lyrics and mostly in its own musical level.
The modern German text, in my composition, quasi the comment (because who thinks in Old High German), the emotional interpretation, gropes its way continually along at the boundaries of the imaginable, not stated, but seeks and asks further.