Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge

The idea for this music is closely tied to the period during the 80s when I was stimulating cultural activity in smaller towns and villages in Styria. During that time, I had compiled a good number of sketches of Styrian folklore, (besides which I also particularly liked) and had composed songs for an amateur theatre performance given by young, artistically ambitious local people. From this and other similar material, I put together this small chamber work in the form of a folk-song out of a necessity to preserve something of the mood and atmosphere of this melancholy region, just as a dream or painful memory. - Hans Werner Henze