|
When I founded Edition HH in 1996, I was determined that it should not become a ‘vanity project’ aimed at promoting some of my large orchestral works rejected by other publishers. Now, with well over 600 publications by many different composers, past and present, on our list, I can safely say that this danger has passed. Here, then, is a little volume of my own containing four miniatures originally written as gifts.
The first, Mit Gefihl, is a love song dedicated to my wife, whom I married 57 years ago. It is as deeply felt today as it was then. The piece was originally accompanied by a semi-humorous poem; its central verse expresses the gist:
Please forgive my many foibles
Man is but a faulty bear!
(Then again, why do the schnoibles
Lose their mind and marry Per?)
My wife and I had a very close friend, Yvonne, whom we loved dearly but who died all too young. She had the blondest hair, so we called her Goldilocks, and she was blessed with a wonderfully quirky sense of humour. La Fille aux Chelox d’or attempts to capture something of her personality.
The third piece is really dedicated to myself, so naturally its spirit is Triste.
Sixty years ago my father, Christian Hartmann, composed the songs for Klatremus Lillemann, a character in the popular Norwegian children’s play Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen, which is still going strong. He was an endless source of beautiful melodies, so the extreme simplicity of the theme of Danse noble, which I wrote to celebrate his 69th birthday on 3 June 1979, was something of a joke between us.
|
