"Dessöwe Aundas" or Bernhard Grooves - auf deutsch lesen...

The way a piece of literature works on its readers is part of the work. This statement is true of Thomas Bernhard like of no other writer. His text are decidedly placed and released to the public who’s reaction is calculated. Repetition and variation, speech rhythms and signals form a voice that is his alone although he has been imitated and copied like no other author of his time.

The same just different.

Literature experts have often credited the works of Bernhard, a classical music lover, with a musicality of their own. It is probably because of the constancy of this poetry that now musicians (especially upper Austrian) have taken up his work. The musicians come, typical of Bernhard’s retrograde ending, from the other side...but still from the same neighborhood.

Dessöwe Aundas.

The musicians of the Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra were impressed with the diligence and power of variation with which Bernhard esthetically treats his own problems of life. How much can/should personal history be allowed to flow into art? The questions present themselves in the full knowledge that the musical setting extends the process further than the literature. Out of artistic distance (the difference between two art forms) and geographical proximity the Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra is able to offer a fresh perspective of Bernhard’s life-achievement from which its music is inspired.

Nine composers among the orchestra musicians have crafted text, passages, themes, motives, signals and musical preferences of Thomas Bernhard into a jazz concert in which the author’s work is expressed in music. With vocalist Ali Gaggl, Bernhards language becomes song. The variety of impulses corresponds to the multifaceted composition.
 

Gerald Preinfalk "What will I do..."

Robert Friedl "This totally unnecessary trip to Traich..."

"(The end of the World)"

Frank Schwinn "Until Total Extinction"

Manfred Weinberger "Exaggeration Specialist?"

Alfred Vollbauer "The Power of Habit"

Robert Bachner "The Cause" - A Comparison

Christian Maurer "Ancestor Worship"

Christian Bachner "The Voice Imitator"

Helmar Hill - "The Singer"

The personality of this important author finds itself translated into another genre of art. The voices of "The Exaggeration Specialist" and "The Voice Imitator" inspire artistic variation.

(Dr. Klaus Zeyringer)