Once and Now (Ehmals und jetzt)

The short piano song on Hölderlin’s poem

ONCE AND NOW

When I was young I was happy in the morning,
I cried in the evening, now as I’ve grown older,
I start my day doubtfully, but
Sacred and fair seems its end.

has been forgotten, or the composer thought it to be lost. It was the Hamburg musicologist Peter Petersen who then found it again in 2010 - as printed in the Hölderlin-Yearbook of 1961 as well as
on the reverse side of the particello of „Maratona di Danza“ being preserved in the Paul Sacher-Foundation in Basel. Furthermore there existed a clean copy by an unknown copyist which might
have been the base of the printed version in the Yearbook. Petersen managed to publish with all available informations a revised version in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in January 2010, and he calls the piece a
„precious little piece of music from the time Henze was young.

Michael Kerstan