The idea for this audiobook came from Mirjam Wiesemann, who looks after the audiobook series Wort&Musik at Cybele Records: an audiobook for children with music by children. David Graham, head of the children’s composition class at the Clara-Schumann-Musikschule Düsseldorf, suggested asking the children’s author Martin Baltscheit for a story. The starting point was a dead bird that Mirjam Wiesemann had found with her daughter, and the experience of how hard it is for adults to explain death to a child.
Sibyl and Matteo find a bird that no longer moves. Is it only asleep, as grown-ups like to say? Whoever sleeps like that, Matteo says, never wakes up again – and Sibyl realises that she too could die at any time. Out of fear she refuses to fall asleep and so sets off a chain of events. Matteo sets out to find something that will restore Sibyl’s peace of mind; his journey takes him across the water, to three lumberjacks, a bear and a herb witch. Told in ten scenes, the story ends with Sibyl’s sleep and her awakening.
The six young composers wrote songs such as Sibyl’s Song and the Lumberjacks’ Song, lullaby music and noise concerts, and they also composed sounds with instruments: the anchor chain is heard on the strings of the piano, the timpani play the shots, the flute takes over the song of the bird. The music is played by pupils of the Musikschule Bonn on harp, horns, cello, flute, percussion and piano.
The spoken word direction was by Thomas Werner of WDR, which commissioned Cybele Records to produce the audiobook. The music was recorded in May 2006 at Burg Langendorf, the spoken word in August 2006 at the Cybele Studios. Ernst-August Schepmann speaks the narrator, Lena Marie Anzenhofer Sibyl and Lorenzo Liebetanz Matteo; further roles are taken by Martin Baltscheit himself, Mirjam Wiesemann and Vera Forester, among others. The audiobook was nominated for the Deutscher Hörbuchpreis in 2007.
The music was written by six children and young people from the composition class: Tom Brüggemann, Simon Ebener-Holscher, Adrian Huber, Laura Käppele, Ebilin Maruyama and Michael Ruzicka. The speakers are children and adults between eleven and seventy-five — among the further roles are the three woodcutters Bob, Frank and Phil, a trout, a bear, a mayor and a herb witch. Thomas Anzenhofer voices the bear, Wolfgang Welter the lumberjack Bob and the mayor, Andreas Külzer the lumberjack Frank, Martin Baltscheit the lumberjack Phil and Mirjam Wiesemann the herb witch. The hybrid SACD runs to 42:18 in stereo and 5.1 surround and is recommended from about the age of seven.