At the beginning of 2009 the team of the audiobook series Wort&Musik came across the Austrian writer Gert Jonke and his story “Der Kopf des Georg Friedrich Händel” (1988). Jonke had written some of his finest texts about composers, and many of his works bear the titles of pieces of music, from “Schule der Geläufigkeit” to “Chorfantasie”. It seemed natural to ask him to read his own text. Only on 19 January 2009 did his Salzburg publisher Jung und Jung report that Jonke had died on 4 January at the age of 62. The audiobook planned with Jonke became one in his honour, released in the 250th year after Händel’s death.
The story begins on a 13 April and leaps back twenty-two years to the stroke after which Händel lived for months only in the left half of his body. From there it follows the life of the composer and opera impresario in London – the patrons and the castrati, John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera”, which parodied Händel’s operatic style, and finally the Messiah, first heard in Dublin on 13 April 1742. Jonke writes in long, artfully nested sentences in which language itself becomes music.
Most of the music was recorded especially for this production. Jörg Waschinski sings, partly a cappella, partly with Martin Schmeding at the organ, arias such as “I know that my Redeemer liveth” from the Messiah and Aci’s dying aria “Verso gia l’alma col sangue”. At the large Gottfried Silbermann organ of 1755 in Dresden Cathedral, Schmeding plays excerpts from Israel in Egypt, the Suite No. 7 in G minor and the Organ Concertos in F major HWV 292 and 293, as well as the Chorale Prelude “Jesu, meine Freude”. The Ensemble Concert Royal Köln plays movements from the Music for the Royal Fireworks and the Water Music on period instruments; these are joined by arias and choruses from the pasticcio Giove in Argo with Benoît Haller, Raimonds Spogis and the Kammerchor Würzburg.
Ulrich Tukur, actor and musician, recorded the story on 5 August 2009 in Montepiano in the Tuscan mountains, far from any background noise. The spoken word direction was by Mirjam Wiesemann and Ingo Schmidt-Lucas. The audiobook was released in 2009 in the audiobook series Wort&Musik; the project was supported by the Kunststiftung NRW. What is read is the unabridged version of the narrative published by Jung und Jung in 2006; the music was recorded in Dresden Cathedral, in the Neander Church in Düsseldorf and in St Pantaleon in Cologne. The hybrid SACD runs to 50:53 and carries a 5.0 surround layer beside the stereo one; the booklet has 44 pages.