Eine schöne Müllerin

"In my relentless quest to rearrange images, I am like a child [...] I adorn myself like a madman with dried flowers that are still very much alive in my dreams." — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, p. 193.

A young person in search of a future, security, and love: euphoric dreams and crushing disappointment. Nothing new so far. Two centuries ago, Wilhelm Müller captured this universal quest poetically in a deliberately naïve style with folkloric simplicity. He sought to express a fiery and unconscious longing for the sublime. The burning result still smolders today in Schubert's immortal melodies from Die Schöne Müllerin, in which a babbling brook is the speechless companion of the doomed.
For note-whisperer Daan Janssens, this song cycle forms the basis for a modern interpretation of a theme that transcends time and space. Schubert's composition is now the guide on this journey of discovery, sometimes bubbling at the surface, and at other times as a deeply hidden undercurrent.
Dreams and illusions are placed in a different perspective through the confrontation with Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.

In Eine schöne Müllerin, Daan Janssens constructs a series of tableaux for baritone and instrumental ensemble, in which the reverberations of the original linger on, reflected in the mirror of today.