Word: marienleben
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When Composer Paul Hindemith came on such lines as these from the 15 poems of German Poet Rainer Maria Rilke's The Life of the Virgin Mary (Das Marienleben), he determined to set them to song. But the first performance of Marienleben, 25 years ago, was not, even Hindemith admitted, "a sensational success." Jagged with octave jumps, hard-to-land-on intervals of sevenths and ninths, and grinding dissonances, his high-tensioned 70-minute song cycle was even more difficult to sing than to listen...