Bernd Wahlbrinck

BALLADEER

- CD -
 

    The ballad — a story told in verse — is one of the oldest forms of popular entertainment. Long before the invention of printing, ballads were transmitted from person to person as they were sung.
   Printed ballads were sold by itinerant hawkers in town and county (cp. CD cover), who sang the ballads they sold, thus providing the tune even as they displayed their wares.

 Reviews

  ... This is homerecording material from the Saguaro & Tumbleweed Studios at the Home of the Wadel - not necessarily ultra-professional, but good music nonetheless, not to mention the outstanding lyrics.

Ben Jamieson in the Atlantic Monthly, January 2007

*

   ... Actually, the first six ballads have been recycled from earlier compilations, e.g. the Deja Vu album (2000) and The Lost Basement Tapes (2005). However, the last song, "The Listeners", which is allegedly a bootleg, is new and vintage Wahlbrinck. I have a hunch Walter de la Mare would have loved it too.

Carl Monk in West Coast Sounds, February 2007

*

   ... It is already amazing, with which insolence Mach-works some contemporaries their musical again and again as alleged "again" publishes. Most comes one with this just on the market thrown disk of Bernd Wahlbrinck nevertheless all too admits here forwards - with the title "Deja Vu" can concern it thus only involuntary irony.
   It remains hoping only that the "artist" will publish in the near future no further Balladen or still worse.

Heinrich Kruip in Neue Volkslieder & Balladen, February 2007

NOTE: This is  the translation of the original German review by the renowned  Babelfish translation program. It may not be entirely accurate.  Here is the German text itself:

   ... Es ist schon erstaunlich, mit welcher Unverfrorenheit manche Zeitgenossen ihre musikalischen Machwerke immer wieder als angeblich "neu" veröffentlichen. Das meiste kommt einem hier bei dieser soeben auf den Markt geworfenen Scheibe von Bernd Wahlbrinck doch allzu bekannt vor – bei dem Titel "Deja Vu" kann es sich somit nur um unfreiwillige Selbstironie handeln.
   Bleibt nur zu hoffen, dass der "Künstler" in naher Zukunft keine weiteren Balladen oder noch Schlimmeres veröffentlichen wird.

*

   
1. LADY ISABEL & THE ELF KNIGHT

 
2. THE DEATH DANCE

Hark! It is midnight
The sexton looks down
From the church tower
At all those dark graves.
'Tis now the moon
Discovers herself
And the churchyard
It's almost as bright as by day.
 
Behold! Here's a grave
There's another, they stir
A woman, a man
They do slowly appear
They're followed by others
So quaint and so queer
They're clad in pale shrouds -
The sexton he peers.

The limbs start dancing
The bones they do rise
And peculiar gestures are made.
Past shame they shake
Their thin pallid thighs
And the shrouds
They are scattered away.

There's rattling and clacking
And clattering fun
Like gaunt wooden mallets
The skeletons run.
The sexton grins, thinking
"A shroud! I'll get one!"
He sneaks past the gravestones –
It's over and done.

The dance, it is over
Again they lie down
Yet one is still tripping
And stumbling around
Up there on the tower
The shroud he has found
Down at the door, rattling
So hollow the sound.

The shroud he must have
And tarry he can't
Like a spider
He at once starts to climb
Crawls up a buttress
And clings to each stone
Will he get him?
'Tis only a question of time.

The sexton is shaking
Dismayed and appalled
He's muttering prayers
Just once and for all.
The bell strikes the hour
Resound do the walls
And down to destruction
The skeleton falls.

Der Türmer, der schaut zu Mitten der Nacht
Hinab auf die Gräber in Lage;
Der Mond, der hat alles ins Helle gebracht;
Der Kirchhof, er liegt wie am Tage.
Da regt sich ein Grab und ein anderes dann:
Sie kommen hervor, ein Weib da, ein Mann,
In weißen und schleppenden Hemden.
 

Das reckt nun, es will sich ergetzen sogleich,
Die Knöchel zur Runde, zum Kranze,
So arm und so jung, und so alt und so reich;
Doch hindern die Schleppen am Tanze.
Und weil hier die Scham nun nicht weiter gebeut,
Sie schütteln sich alle, da liegen zerstreut
Die Hemdlein über den Hügeln.
 

Nun hebt sich der Schenkel, nun wackelt das Bein,
Gebärden da gibt es vertrackte;
Dann klippert's und klappert's mitunter hinein,
Als schlüg' man die Hölzlein zum Takte.
Das kommt nun dem Türmer so lächerlich vor;
Da raunt ihm der Schalk, der Versucher, ins Ohr:
Geh! hole dir einen der Laken.
 

Getan wie gedacht! und er flüchtet sich schnell
Nun hinter geheiligte Türen.
Der Mond, und noch immer er scheinet so hell
Zum Tanz, den sie schauderlich führen.
Doch endlich verlieret sich dieser und der,
Schleicht eins nach dem andern gekleidet einher,
Und, husch, ist es unter dem Rasen.
 

Nur einer, der trippelt und stolpert zuletzt
Und tappet und grapst an den Grüften;
Doch hat kein Geselle so schwer ihn verletzt,
Er wittert das Tuch in den Lüften.
Er rüttelt die Turmtür, sie schlägt ihn zurück,
Geziert und gesegnet, dem Türmer zum Glück,
Sie blinkt von metallenen Kreuzen.
 

Das Hemd muß er haben, da rastet er nicht,
Da gilt auch kein langes Besinnen,
Den gotischen Zierat ergreift nun der Wicht
Und klettert von Zinne zu Zinnen.
Nun ist's um den armen, den Türmer getan!
Es ruckt sich von Schnörkel zu Schnörkel hinan,
Langbeinigen Spinnen vergleichbar.
 

Der Türmer erbleichet, der Türmer erbebt,
Gern gäb er ihn wieder, den Laken.
Da häkelt – jetzt hat er am längsten gelebt –
Den Zipfel ein eiserner Zacken.
Schon trübet der Mond sich verschwindenden Scheins,
Die Glocke, sie donnert ein mächtiges Eins,
Und unten zerschellt das Gerippe.

NOTE: There is a link to an interview with Bernd Wahlbrinck concerning the collaboration with Goethe on this song. The interview is in German.

   
3. THE JEALOUS LOVER

 
4. THE CASTLE BY THE SEA

Did you not see with wandering clouds of gold above it

That towering castle standing down there by the sea?

Trying to melt into its image in the clear waves

Trying to rise into the evening clouds so free.

You may be sure I did behold that castle

The moon above and veils of mist floating around.

But the winds and all the waves they were so silent

A plaintive song the only woeful sound.

Then you did see the queen and the king consort

And their fair daughter standing on the balcony?

Though I did see the parents' long black garment

That fair young lady I did not see.

Hast du das Schloß gesehen,
 Das hohe Schloß am Meer?
 Golden und rosig wehen
 Die Wolken drüber her.

Es möchte sich niederneigen
 In die spiegelklare Flut;
 Es möchte streben und steigen
 In der Abendwolken Glut.

„Wohl hab' ich es gesehen,
 Das hohe Schloß am Meer,
 Und den Mond darüber stehen
 Und Nebel weit umher."

Der Wind und des Meeres Wallen,
 Gaben die frischen Klang?
 Vernahmst du aus hohen Hallen
 Saiten und Festgesang?

„Die Winde, die Wogen alle
 Lagen in tiefer Ruh,
 Einem Klagelied aus der Halle
 Hört ich mit Tränen zu."

Sahest du oben gehen
 Den König und sein Gemahl?
 Der roten Mäntel Wehen,
 Der goldnen Kronen Strahl?

Führten sie nicht mit Wonne
 Eine schöne Jungfrau dar,
 Herrlich wie die Sonne,
 Strahlend im goldnen Haar?

„Wohl sah ich die Eltern beide,
 Ohne der Kronen Licht,
 Im schwarzen Trauerkleide;
 Die Jungfrau sah ich nicht."

 
5. DEJA VU

in ancient times
a tribe set out
to find the edge of the world
over mountains and valleys and seas
did they follow the sun
after scores of years
a child
saw his forebears' memories

DEJA VU
 

up in the sky
she saw
the cloud bizarrely shaped
like a dragon with thin tongue and tail
and then it struck her
she'd seen
this very same cloud
in stranger lands
many years ago

DEJA VU
 

a butterfly
he once set
down on a maple tree
and then suddenly he got this weird
creepy  feeling
when
he saw this leaf
that had been nibbled at
a few weeks ago

DEJA VU

   
6. HANS BREITMANN'S PARTY

7. THE LISTENERS
 

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller
Knocking on the moonlit door
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor
And a bird flew up out of the turret
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time
'Is there anybody there?' he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness
Their stillness answering his cry
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup
And the sound of iron on stone
And how the silence surged softly backward
When the plunging hoofs were gone

    NOTE: "The Listeners" is one of the most outstanding and beautiful examples of a so-called slice of life story - see the article I started at Wikipedia: Slice_of_Life_Story

   NOTE: His poem, 'Thomas Hardy', celebrates a visit de la Mare made to Hardy's house, Max Gate, in Dorset in June 1921. Hardy was an important influence on de la Mare's sensibility and for his part, Hardy esteemed the younger writer, so much so that a few day before he died, Hardy asked his wife to read him 'The Listeners' and afterwards said "That is possibly the finest poem of the century."