Crime novels, films and TV series are all the rage these days. In the UK, sales of crime novels exceed those of romantic, fantasy or science fiction titles. Pre- and post-watershed television crime series such as “Peaky Blinders”, “Line of Duty”, “Murder in Provence”, NCIS and “Better call Saul” often revolve around specific towns, cities or regions and run for several years, expanding on plot lines and drawing in numerous characters. It seems the eagerness to hunt the killer side-by-side with the detectives and a sort of collective desire to sit rigid with fear on our sofas and be subjected to all manner of horrors has taken hold of society. However, the fascination with the depths to which human beings can descend goes back much further; indeed it is part of our “cultural heritage”, so to speak. Just take a look at the history of literature and you will see it is packed with criminal deeds: the original sin in the Garden of Eden, fratricide in the Bible, and some while later in the antique world, murder and mayhem were the foundations of every Greek or Roman tragedy. This is happening amid – or despite – the daily menu of dramatic events served up on news programmes, the barbarous events taking place around the world, events of such stark reality that they surely leave crime thriller plots in the shade. Does that mean that anyone could become a murderer? Forensic psychiatrists have been investigating this question for years and have repeatedly reached the conclusion that no one is immune to committing an act of madness when fate has dealt them a dreadful blow. That is what happens to the female narrator on my new lieder album. Killing one’s rival, a variation on the crime of passion committed in a conflict situation as a result of overwhelming jealousy, by losing control over one’s negative character traits shines a light on a dark power that causes her to get carried away in a highly tense moment. And now she must live with what she has done, a crime that she is unable to reconcile with her conscience, a deed that makes her feel as if an alien part of her committed it. In the search for suitable pieces for my idea of a sophisticated, classical, and at the same time varied lieder recital, which aims on a second level to tell a new tale of (crime) fiction in a tight dramatic form, I went rummaging through the full and rich gamut of German-language lieder repertoire. In my detective work I came across both popular classics and some rarely heard gems. I would like to take a closer look at some of these works that I consider very special, and at their composers.
