Lange nichts gegessen

Es trafen sich von ungefähr
Ein Wolf, ein Mensch, sowie ein Bär,
Und weil sie lange nichts gegessen,
So haben sie sich aufgefressen.
Der Wolf den Menschen, der den Bär,
Der Bär den Wolf. – Es schmeckte sehr
Und blieb nichts übrig, als ein Tuch,
Drei Haare und ein Wörterbuch.
Das war der Nachlass dieser drei.
Der eine Mensch der hiess...
    Capitan Ramon Diaz de la Escosura,
    M. Gisela, Hobble-Frank,
    Karl Hohenthal,
    Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont,
    Ernst von Linden,
    Emma Pollmer....
...Karl May.

There met more or less
A wolf, a man, as well as a bear,
And because they hadn't eaten for quite awhile,
Therefore they all feasted on each other.
The wolf fed on the man, who fed on the bear,
And the bear fed on the wolf -- deliciously
And nothing much was left over, except a cloth,
Three hairs and a dictionary.
That was the posthumous work of these three.
And that man was called....
Capitan Ramon Diaz de la Escosura,
M. Gisela, Hobble-Frank,
Karl Hohenthal,
Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont,
Ernst von Linden,
Emma Pollmer....
...Karl May.

The text comes originally from Stumpfsinn in Versen und Bildern von Hans Bötticher und Richard Seewald, 1912. This fanciful tale in verse does not originally include the noms de plume of the fiction author, Karl May ^{[ 1 ]}, whom Ringelnatz pokes fun at in this verse. As May was a character in many senses of the word, and published his fiction even under his wife's name, I thought to include some but not all of the pseudonyms Kay used in the course of his career as a way of lengthening this joke in rhyme. I am sure Ringelnatz would have approved.

As Ringelnatz was in part a cabaret performer, I chose a cabaret-like oompah-pah character for the opening gestures, in which major triads built on the major seven tonic chord flesh out the harmonic vocabulary. The storytelling is simply set as a "number" for the performer, who is encouraged to overdo the stylistic sense of the writing.

The bridge material moves into a false waltz feel for a moment in the more distant tonal region of E flat, before settling back into the sharp key chords as outlined in the opening, after which a reprise of the opening "verse" revisits the over-done story line, and then the admission that the "man" was May, but in many of his pseudonyms before hearing his given name, the coda is mad from the same opening material in octave displacement.

The score for Lange nichts gegessen is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.

NOTES

^{[ 1 ]} Karl Friedrich May (1842-1912) was one of the best selling German writers of his era, noted mainly for fanciful books set in the American Old West, (best known for the characters of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand) and similar books set in Germany, the Orient and Middle East. It should be noted that his Western Americana was wholly fantasized, as the only trip he made to the US was in 1908, and he never travelled more west than Buffalo, New York.

May was also a poet, playwright, and amateur composer. May used many different and strange pseudonyms, including Capitan Ramon Diaz de la Escosura, M. Gisela, Hobble-Frank, Karl Hohenthal, D. Jam, Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont, Ernst von Linden, P. van der Löwen, and Emma Pollmer (the actual name of his first wife; according to May, she was never aware of the purpose or content of his writing), though today his work is uniformly published under his own name. Ringelnatz pokes fun of the fanciful tales by this logically impossible account.