Dubistmeinichbindein Yesterday ’s Tomorrow – The songs of Walther von der Vogelweide

Once, seven cities disputed about the hometown of Homer – today, fourteen German speaking landscapes, among them Franconia, Lower Austria, Tyrol, Swabia-Rhine Franconia, Bohemia and Hungary quarrel about the birth place of the poet Walter von der Vogelweide whose biographical data are merely known in fragments.
The biographical state of facts may seem meagre – Walther’s poetic legacy does not: He left behind a work of altogether five hundred staves of lyric poetry. Not only the enormous quantity of oeuvre secured this poet’s fame but rather the unique lyrical richness which made Walther von der Vogelweide become the most important poet of the Middle Ages; which made him a confident commander and inventive innovator of the various genres of the Minne Lyric and made him become the actual founder and master of the German verse lyric resp. of the political poem. Walther who may be regarded as one of the first professional poets, possessed quite the necessary self-confidence which brings him close to present-day singer and songwriter stars: In his texts, he takes a subjective position and allows the audience to scrutinise the woman he sings about regarding her beautiness, dignity and virtue.
Sanda Weigl and Anthony Coleman deal with the poetic legacy of Walther von der Vogelweide and lead it into the musical world of the Big Apple. Coleman and Weigl present the old verses in new compositions which give musical space to the narrative dimension of Walther's language so that we can recognise a modern poet.