Weltschmerz: “Dort, wo du nicht bist, ist das Glück.”

Camenae Collective: Daniel Kool piano | Tiziana Pintus violin |
Henriette Posthuma de Boer texts

Painfully beautiful music and texts by Clara and Robert Schumann, Leopardi, Jean Paul… Weltschmerz: “There, where you are not, is your happiness.”

This view of the world was widely shared among romantic authors.

Quite sombre…The good news is that the music I chose for this program is amazing: Clara Schumann 3 Romances, Joachim Raff Fantasy and Robert Schumann 3rd Sonata – not often heard, one of his last works…change of moods and different emotions every couple of notes :-O

My idea for this program was to recreate the setting of that time, what might have inspired the composers, what were they exposed to…and, my passion: combining and connecting different art forms, which helps me get a stronger impression of and therefore a stronger insight into the material.

I have asked the journalist and former opera singer Henriette Posthuma de Boer to introduce the historical setting of the period, and read texts from Jean Paul, the writer who coined the term “Weltschmerz” and which inspired Schumann. To quote him, “I learned more counterpoint from Jean Paul than from my music teacher”.

Further, poetry by Leopardi, and pianist and psychologist Daniël Kool will share his insights into the effect of Weltschmerz on the composers, the performers and inevitably on the listeners.