An introduction to The Welten Project
The Welten Project is the umbrella title given to a growing body of musical and multimedia works drawn together through the inspiration of Welten, the seventeen-poem cycle by Gertrud Kolmar.
The Welten cycle, along with other Kolmar works, presents a compelling opportunity for creating work of re-imagination and ekphrasis – and, in addition, act as a springboard and inspiration for wholly original work.
“I shall die as most will die; the rake will pass through my life
And comb my name back into the soil.
Light, speechless, childless, I shall stare weary-eyed at the barren sky.”
This was the quote, from the German Jewish poet Gertrud Kolmar, that I read back in November 2007 that woke me out of a long creative slump and back into action – and in such a way, so I thought, that I was neither expecting nor seeking.
The occasion was that of visiting my cousin Kate and her husband Philip in Winchester shortly after their return from a visit to the Jewish Museum in Berlin. They brought back a museum guide. I picked it up, flicked through and found myself stopped in my tracks by Kolmar’s quote. I don’t even know why. The quote is beautiful, but ‘stopped in my tracks’? Something sparked deep inside me and, before I left for home, I had determined not just to find out all I could about this poet of which I’d never heard, but to set one of her poems as a kind of cantata for solo soprano, two cellos and small choir: exactly the kind of attached over-intentional thinking I’d generally advise my students to avoid at all costs!
So, who was Gertrud Kolmar and how come I’d never heard of her before?
Philip Kuhn, one of the two translators for her last collection of poems under the title Welten (worlds), wrote this short biographical note about her (abridged, here):
Gertrud Chodziesner was born on 10 December 1894 into a Jewish family in Berlin.
After training as a teacher, she worked with orphaned and disadvantaged children until an ill-fated love affair with a non-Jewish army officer resulted in an abortion and subsequent suicide attempt. After the Armistice in 1918, she found work as a private tutor and governess until the autumn of 1927 when she attended a vacation course at Dijon University. But her time in France was curtailed when she was obliged to return home to nurse her mother. Following her mother’s death in March 1930, Gertrud assumed full-time responsibilities for the family household in Finkenkrug, an idyllic rural suburb of Berlin.
While living in Finkenkrug, Gertrud (under the pen-name Kolmar) composed nearly all her important literary works including eight cycles of poetry).
In July 1941, Gertrud was conscripted to a munitions’ factory. Just over a year later, her father was deported to Theresienstadt and finally, in late February 1943, Gertrud herself was arrested and deported to Auschwitz where, had she managed to survive the nightmare journey east, she would have been selected, on arrival, for immediate extermination. [1]
If it wasn’t for Swiss domiciled family members managing to smuggle much of Gertrud’s work out of Germany, we would almost certainly know nothing about her life and work at all. As it is, she still remains far less internationally known and acknowledged than some of her contemporaries – Nelly Sachs, Miklos Radnoti, Primo Levi, Else Lasker-Schuller, for example.
As I started to find translations of her work and read more about her life, I found myself deeply drawn into this extraordinary woman’s world - her 1937 Welten cycle (meaning Worlds) standing out to me as an especially compelling body of work. Whatever themes explored in each of the ‘worlds’, each poem seemed to be suffused with a pregnant sense of mystery, deep soulfulness and intrigue. I was quickly hooked!
Out of the Darkness
I soon decided to set the poem Aus dem Dunkel (in English translation) as the main text for a work that became the cantata Out of the Darkness. The poem evokes powerful, dream-like images and strange visions – a visceral sense of uncertainty, crumbling and decay arise as the protagonist continues on her journey through the city and out into the mountains.
A sense of deep ill-ease saturates the mood – surely, an eerie foretelling of the imminent tidal wave of horror about to hit the world.
Here are the first two stanzas from the poem
Out of the darkness I come, a woman,
I carry a child, but no longer know whose;
Once I knew it.
But now no man is for me anymore…
They all have trickled away like rivulets,
Gulped up by the earth.
I continue on my way.
For I want to reach the mountains before daybreak, and the stars are beginning to fade.
Out of the darkness I come.
Through dusky alleys I wandered alone,
When, suddenly, a charging light’s talons tore the soft blackness, The wild cat, the hind,
And doors flung open wide, disgorged ugly screams, wild howls, beastly roar.
Drunkards wallowed...
I shook all this from the hem of my dress along the way. [2]
Out of the Darkness [3] was premiered in Winchester Cathedral on the 19th March, 2009 with soprano Melanie Pappenheim, cellists Sophie Harris and Lucy Railton, Schoolhouse 6 Ensemble, conducted by Howard Moody. Later that year we toured and recorded the piece. Here’s a link to the full album.
The Angel in the Forest
It wasn’t long before I set about composing a second piece, also setting text from Welten, now much aided by a new translation of the entire cycle by Philip Kuhn and Ruth Von Zimmermann [4]. The featured poem for this work was Der Engel im Walde (The Angel in the Forest) and became a second cantata, this time written for the tenor, James Gilchrist, small chorus and cello sextet.
In this poem, the tone is exceptionally bleak. There is little, if any, hope offered as the protagonist and her partner flee and attempt to find solace in ...the musing fields, which congenially console our roaming feat with flowers and grass… To the animals of the forest who don’t speak evil.
The angel they then encounter is a being… ‘Tall and slender, without wings. His countenance is sorrow. And his robe has the pallor of icy, gleaming stars in winter nights.’
Here is an angel who appears impotent – unable to fly, unable to do what angels must surely do best: inspire, bless and offer a certain portal into the realms of mystery, the sacred, the heavenly.
The text continues:
The being, who does not say, no should, who just is, who knows no curse, brings no blessings and does not surge into cities, towards that which dies.
He does not behold us in his silver silence, but we behold him, because we are two and forsaken.
During the time Kolmar was writing Welten she and her father had been forced to leave their beautiful home in Finkenkrug and move into cramped, shared accommodation in the centre of Berlin – a flat where any sense of the once certain privacy became a thing of the past.
Come with me, my friend, come. The stairs in my father’s house are dark and crooked and narrow and the steps are worn; but now it is the house of the orphan and strangers live in it. Take me away.
And from here on, the poem shifts into a declaration, a plea that the ambiguous (or even mysterious) you character in the poem becomes her home… It is a powerful transition.
The old rusty key in the gate hardly obeys my
feeble hands.
Now it creaks shut.
Now look at me in the darkness, you, from today
my home.
Because your arms shall build me sheltering walls,
And your heart will be my chamber and your eye my
window through which the morning shines.
And the forehead towers up as you stride.
You are my house on all the streets of the world, in every valley,
on every hill.
You roof, you will thirst wearily with me under sweltering midday,
shiver with me when snow storm whips.
We will thirst and hunger, suffer together,
Together, one day, sink down by the dusty wayside verge and
weep...
The Angel in the Forest [5] received its first full premiere at St James’s Church, Piccadilly on the 21st January, 2012, with James Gilchrist, soloist, Sophie Harris (leading the cello sextet), the Schoolhouse 6 Ensemble (chorus) and Ian Belton, conducting. I was thrilled when, in Autumn 2022, we were able to record the piece with James Gilchirst, a cello sextet comprising players from The Philharmonia Orchestra and singers from The Rupa Ensemble. Here’s a link to the full recording. Here’s a short intro film where James and I talk about the piece and the project.
After composing The Angel in the Forest, my composing interests diversified and further Kolmar works were set aside while I pursued other compositional interests.
The first lockdown of 2020, however, presented me with the opportunity to thoroughly re-appraise my creative intentions and one particular result of this was a reanimation of my commitment to developing new Kolmar pieces. Collaborating with some remarkable creative partners, 2022 saw two new Welten works come to fruition. The first of these was the film project, Yearning.
Yearning
Yearning is a danced-inspired re-imagination of the poem and a collaboration with choreographer Daisy Brodskis, dancer Hannah Rudd, cinematographer Miguel Altunaga, poet Emily Louise Bland and soprano Miranda Ostler.
Here is the poem in its entirety: I invite you to read it and then watch the film.
I think of you,
I think of you always.
People spoke to me, but I didn’t take heed.
I looked into the deep Chinese blue of the evening sky from which
the moon hung as a round yellow lantern,
And mused upon another moon, yours,
Which became for you the dazzling shield of an ironical hero, maybe,
or the soft golden discus of an exalted thrower.
In the corner of the room I sat then without lamplight,
day weary, veiled, given entirely to the darkness,
The hands lay in the lap, my eyes fell shut.
But onto the inner septum of the eyelids was painted your picture
small and blurred.
Under stars I strode past quieter gardens, past the silhouettes
of pine trees, shallow silenced houses, steep gables
Under soft funereal coat, which was only occasionally
seized by wheel grinding, tugged by owl screech,
And I talked silently of you, beloved, to the noiseless, to the white
almond-eyed dog, which I led.
Engulfed nights, drowned in everlasting seas!
When my hand bedded itself in the down of your chest to slumber,
When our breaths blended into an exquisite wine, which we offered
to our Goddess, Love, in a rose quartz bowl,
When in the mountains of darkness the druse grew and ripened for us,
hollow fruit of rock crystals and lilac amethysts,
When the tenderness of our arms called fiery tulips and porcelain blue hyacinths
from wide undulating earth reaching into dawn,
When, playing on twisted stem, the half opened bud of the poppy like
a viper flicked blood-red over us,
Balsam and cinnamon trees of the east lifted themselves
around our bed with quivering leaves
And crimson weaver finches intertwined our mouth’s breath into
floating nests. –
When will we flee again into the secret’s forests, which, impenetrable,
shelter hind and deer from the pursuer?
When will my body be again white fragrant bread for your hungry
beseeching hands, the split fruit of my mouth be sweet to
your thirsting lips?
When will we encounter each other again?
Strew heartfelt words like seeds of aromatic herbs and
summer flowers
And fall silent happier, so as to hear the singing sources
of our blood?
(Beloved, do you feel my small listening ear resting on your heart?)
When will we glide again in the barque under lemon coloured sail,
Rocked blissfully by silver foamed dancing wave,
Past palms adorned by a green turban like the scion
of the prophet,
Towards the fringe reefs of distant islands, coral reefs,
on which you want to founder?
When again, beloved, ... when again ...?...
Now my path sinters
Through wasteland. Thorn scratches the foot.
Streams, cool, refreshing waters, murmur; but I don’t find them.
Dates swell, which I don’t taste. My starving soul
Mutters one word only, this one:
“Come ...”
Oh come ...
Translated by Philip Kuhn and Ruth von Zimmermann. Published by Shearsman Books.
Ekphrasis (when a work of art in one medium is ‘translated’ into that of another medium – a picture or a ceramic pot into the form of a poem, for example) and reimagination of an already existing piece of work are creative pursuits that interest me greatly. They open up an opportunity that I can only express as a kind of special intimacy: moving into the space of another’s world, another’s experience, another point of view
Creating Yearning as a collaboration and a reimagination was a most interesting process. We took the view, here, that we would not attempt to translate the poem at all, but to work with certain themes that the poem clearly evokes. Director Daisy Brodskis says in her brief synopsis:
Ebbing and flowing between torment and bliss, the longing for fulfilment, unrequited.
Yearning is not as simple as a recall of memory or a ‘want’. There is, in yearning, both truth and fantasy. Time holds no weight. It merges ecstasy and agony in a dream-nightmare-like state.
But whilst carrying this, we might find ourselves resigned to simply pulling back into
‘ordinary’ life as we continue along our path.“My starving soul
Mutters one word, only this one: “come...”
Oh come...”
Gertrud Kolmar
Here’s a link to Yearning: a short film.
Garden in Summer (IV)
This is an EP project that was released in May 2023. It is another collaboration – this time with performer Avigail Tlalim, director Anastasia Bruce-Jones and poet Emily Louise Bland. The EP comprises four spoken-word tracks and a re-mix instrumental. A particular feature of this suite of pieces is that it includes both a reading/performance of the original Welten poem (Garden in Summer, translated by Philip Kuhn and Ruth von Zimmermann) and also reading/performances of three stunning, specially written poetic reimaginations of the original poem by Emily Louise Bland. Once again, Emily weaves her magic in finding wholly fresh perspectives in creating a kind of three-part narrative journey.
Our original Press Release description read as follows:
Garden in Summer
Garden in Summer is a cross-disciplinary, ekphrastic audio piece, that interweaves music and poetry to beckon the listener towards gardens remembered, summers echoing across decades, romances captured and lost, and myths made manifest. Its bright light creates long shadows; the ghost of a pervading, dark presence reaches across the glittering insects and singing skin. Combining composition by Julian Marshall, voice-work by Avigail Tlalim and direction by Anastasia Bruce-Jones, three 21st Century British artists meet in the soundscape of 1980s Latin America to summon a poem written in 1930s Germany by Gertrud Kolmar. – Anastasia Bruce-Jones
Here’s the original Kolmar poem that Avigail performs on the track of the same name:
Garden in Summer (1V)
It was nothing else; no bird, no butterfly flew.
Only a yellowing leaf quivered into the encompassed pond,
I saw it.
Come.
Oh, this dewy soft-breathing grass, how tenderly it cools
my feverish toes!
Bend a little:
Hazelnuts: the large pillaging spotted woodpecker may
have scattered them here.
But they are not yet ripe.
No, I am neither peckish nor hungry.
Later we will go beneath the fruit trees and search on the
lawn for beautiful red-flaming apples,
Or shake the round, juicy gold-green plums.
Yes, will you?
Do you still remember: all those Peacock butterflies, so many,
that sucked on the fallen rotted fruits and swayed?
And also a Mourning Cloak fluttered, dark velvet, golden-
hemmed, pearled blue ...
O the rose! She perfumes ... Yesterday she still wanted to stay
in bud;
Now night unlocked her, so she could flower, the shy, blushing one,
and she seems happy ...
You beloved one, in the dream of the bumble-bees and bees
such untouched-floating alabaster cup must glow.
You ask me if bees and bumble-bees dream?
Sure they dream of sweet foaming bees-milk,
when they slumber childlike in this
cream-white lily.
But stone-bumble-bees are the most beautiful, buzzing in warm
black and gingery furs ...
Why do you suddenly look at me strangely and smile?
Was I your intoxicating chalice, shimmering
pale in midnights?
Your milk, your wine, gold-brown Malaga,
ruby kirsch?
Be quiet. I lay the breathing hand on your lips ...
Morning wind. Faint trembling blades of grass. Moisture.
And a tiny motionless squatting frog, formed out
of green bronze.
And a damsel fly, steel blue with glassy wings,
Murmurs away. I shudder ...
Willows, like bathing women, bend their foreheads, and ash-blond
falling hair, towards the pond.
Say, does a snail-horn bode well for the one who
picks it up?
If you doubt, I will give it to the waters.
How they crinkle, how they billow ... silken ... and still glisten
coldness.
Beloved, let us still sit here a little, on the only open small
sunny spot in the reed bed,
And look across to the windows, our windows,
knotted around by clematis and darker ivy.
How I like this small castle hidden-away from the world, enclosed
in shade!
Also the wall decorations, also the blackened
gilding, the crumbling Cherubs, the weary
wreaths of flowers,
Also the moss, hanging off the cracked
Greek vases.
Also by the gate the mighty lime and its wood-pigeon
calling again with darkening cooing.
And the elaborately forged lattice ...
Are you going now ... Shall I follow already? Lead me; I
shiver ... I fear ...
I would like to swim up to the water-lilies, the
yellow glow.
Look, the fleece of your chest proliferates like algae, and I
know: you are the water sprite.
And I know: countless riches, sea-silver, sludge-gold,
you hoard deep in hidden chambers under the
water, under the earth.
Will you take my hands now, dive with me to the bottom,
to the gate guarded by a heavy, moustached
catfish?
Shall I never see sister or brother again, nor the
old father any more, whom I love?
You, I tremble ...
If I conceived: my child would have webs between
fingers and toes, would strangely wear mussels and
water lentils in endlessly dripping hair.
Back to the bank .... Mocker!
Are you whispering in jest, that I must bear you twin boys,
Castor and Pollux, because their royal mother’s
name adorns me?
Do we really believe that a God through a swan can approach
an earthly woman? The charming fable? –
I fall silent ... I lied ...
My caressing hands nestle feathers, feel softer
down, and white quiveringly-spread wings
beat over me ...
And here are Emily Louise Bland’s three poems written as re-imaginations of Kolmar’s original:
Sunlit Hour
Fog lifted early and, upon the dewy soft-breathing grass
We came into a sudden sunlit hour
That burnt through sheets of cloud and
Leaked between the lattice of small papery leaves
Spilling over water lilies and into the river, slow-moving and heavy with earth.
Wide-branching oaks stood like guardians
Their mirror image pulsing with short strokes of waves driven by the wind
And a pair of blue damselfly tumbled and shimmered in the granular air
Before disappearing into the sun’s watery yellow.
Beneath the slender arms of a silver birch, we watched the new moon rise in daylight
And the widening sky filled with mists of parakeet green
Appearing and disappearing amongst the overreaching trees
The clear stanza of bird song, as soon as sung, was not there
And how I wished to hear the way you whisper ‘more’.
Beloved, rest your hand on mine as tenderly as dew rests on red berries
Lay your head in my lap and sleep easy in the halved-light
Surely this is the most blessed time of my life?
Hummingbird hawk-moths danced across the landscape to join the honeysuckle
And an iridescent beetle slid lazily down the stem of a nearby dandelion
Wild rosebuds, hidden in the clefts of ancient stones, relaxed and opened
Dizzy on the edge of transformation
And in your eyes, the reflection of a new nest
Balanced in the bending of the bark above us.
‘Two lovers are cocooned in the happenings of a dreamy, summer's afternoon, enthralled by one another amidst the vibrancy of the natural world. Lyrical and uplifting, Sunlit Hour conveys the giddiness, anticipation and curiosity that ensues from new connection and the possibility of things to come.’ – Emily Louise Bland
2. Canopy
The sun set sleepily behind a veil
And a single swallow arced across the inky darkness
That seeped into the blue, like blood into water
And pooled around the crystal moon that hung above us.
While mirrored trees, darkening, stirred the silver river with their elegant branches
Wooly milk caps, glazed in the night’s sheen
Grew amongst the tissue-paper bark and black entangled roots.
Beneath a canopy of tooth-edged leaves
A tender gravity summoned me towards you, like a sailboat to shore
And, haze-headed, we wreathed necks with hands, like clematis
‘Til there was no space between us.
More shadow than form, I marveled at the way you wore each beam of moonlight
And held the secret between my knowing and yours
Like a flame in two cupped hands.
Bending with the night-blooming casa blanca lilies, your body floated on my hips
Then struck and rose against me like a tidal flood
Gasping brightness, I climbed the path past sight and memory while you whispered of the world to come through the long shimmer of a cicada’s song
And in a single moment….. the endless was suspended.
‘The poem offers a window into the lovers' internal worlds and the world of/that of(?) the night garden that surrounds them. Canopy evokes the passion, urgency and tenderness of new love with a hint of dark drama and suspense’. – Emily Louise Bland
3. Yours is the Heart
Blue daylight scattered across the summer’s unending sky
And, lulled by the rhythm of little waves arriving on the marbled sand
We lay half-dreaming, eyes half-closed in the coarse burned-yellow grass.
While humming bees flew faithfully to a waterfall of wisteria
A kingfisher darted over floating mats of white-lemon flowers
Then returned to rest upon his low hanging branch
To watch dimpling bubbles dance below.
Yellow wagtails roosted in twig-laced hollows
Their nests suspended in the purple haze of perennials
And, emerging from a tunnel of arching stems: a velvet toad
Drunk on a cocktail of fruits and mayflies.
Awoken from a fever dream
In which I felt your lip’s impassioned touch
I stretched and rose
Sylph-like down banks of heavy soil
And into cinnamon waters, moved towards you.
Between the living world and the world of death
We blinked and could not see beyond each other
Hold me here with your invisible hands, beloved
Speak to me of ancient truths
Yes, yours is the heart I have been waiting for
Asking everything of you and nothing.
‘The third poem in the anthology, Yours is the Heart finds our lovers awakening but still in a dreamlike state. The rest of the world and its harsh inevitabilities may be approaching but for now their union and happiness is assured’. – Emily Louise Bland
Here is a link to the full EP (minus the instrumental remix).
Art (1V)
Art is a solo piece that I composed for tenor James Gilchrist in 2022. It is sung acapella throughout and sets the final poem in the Welten cycle. The piece received its performance premiere by James on April 6th 2024.
Garden in Summer - Steve Gadd Instrumental Remix.
Sometime in the summer of 2023, my son Solomon came to visit and shared with me a video of the composer and pianist Chic Corea playing a piece with an, as always, awesome band that included the legendary drummer Steve Gadd. It reminded me of how much I LOVE groove! More than reminded me, it reignited a passion and an idea. Through my old friend, the record producer Gary Katz, I approached Steve Gadd about the possibility of playing on a ‘remix’ version of the original Garden in Summer track. To my delight, he agreed, and you can hear the result here.
What’s next for The Welten Project ?
August 2024 - a renewed sense of vitality, vision and commitment to develop TWP in a variety of ways. Plans include: new work, performance of existing work and research work aimed at contextualising the project as a whole. All to be announced as plans become confirmed.
For reviews and comments of some of TWP works see here.
Julian Marshall
Suffolk, September 2024
© Philip Kuhn 29 September 2010 / 8 January 2012
This short note is extracted from Sein Antlitz ist Lei/His Countenance is Sorrow, Philip Kuhn’s full-length essay on the life and work of Gertrud Kolmar, originally published in a limited edition by itinerant press to mark the world premiere of Julian Marshall’s Out of the Darkness.
Kolmar, Gertrud. My Gaze Is Turned Inwards: Letters 1934 – 1943. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004.
Out of the Darkness is published by Novello and Co and is available as a recording (MMC Recordings) on CD and via streaming platforms (listen on Spotify here).
Worlds (Welten) – Gertrud Kolmar. Translated by Philip Kuhn and Ruth von Zimmermann. Published by Shearsman Books.
The Angel in the Forest is published by Novello and Co. and is released as a digital only EP on Orchid Classics. The recording can be heard via all digital platforms (Orchid Classics catalogue Number: ORC100209)