Narrated life

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Narrated Life was the biographical series of the record brand Deutsche Grammophon in the first half of the 1960s and, along with the literary archive and the series For the Young, the company's third major record series , the majority of which published literary voice recordings in the broadest sense.

Self-portraits of great personalities

It gave exceptional artists from various disciplines the opportunity to portray their lives for the record in collaboration with the DG . A self-portrait was also the subtitle of every publication, which always had the name of the personality narrating her life as the main title. The text spoken by the artists themselves on the recordings was based on original scripts for the series. Between its individual sections, the autobiographical narrative was loosened up, on the one hand, but also illustrated (e.g. with the great musicians) through a careful selection of music and sound documents.

Record series

Every record, Narrated Life , appeared in an elaborate gatefold cover - the title page was essentially silver-gray with a portrait photo of the biographed in the middle - with an integrated booklet on high-gloss paper, which always contained a professional foreword by the journalist and writer Josef Müller-Marein as well as large-format photos from the The work of the sitter included. The record itself bore the same yellow-colored label that the company's classical music productions carried at the time.

Editors involved

The editor Hannes Reinhardt , who also worked as a filmmaker, was responsible for the artistic design and management of all editions . In their work on the series, he and Müller-Marein set the focus on the person behind the artist, memories of his private environment, people and events, certain ideas and attitudes that were decisive for him and his work.

Reinhardt and Müller-Marein had previously prepared numerous musical self-portraits for the radio together, but exclusively by musicians. They were also considered specialists in the genre due to an extensive book publication The Musical Self-Portrait .

Portrayed personalities

Within the plate series were u. a. personalities as diverse as Karl Böhm , Ernst Deutsch , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Ferenc Fricsay , Tilla Durieux , Willy Haas , Eugen Jochum , Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler , Oskar Kokoschka , Bernhard Paumgartner , Irmgard Seefried , Rita Streich and Carl Zuckmayer testimonials.

effect

Some recordings in this series have not been reissued to this day.

Hannes Reinhardt also produced his self-portraits for television after the Narrated Life was discontinued at Deutsche Grammophon , for example the often repeated show Karl Jaspers - A Self-Portrait (first broadcast: 1966 ).

A series of the same name produced by the Hessischer Rundfunk for radio from 1981 has otherwise no connection to the talked- about record series Narrated Life described here .

literature

  • Josef Müller-Marein, Hannes Reinhardt: The musical self-portrait of composers, conductors, instrumentalists, and singers of our time . Nannen Verlag, Hamburg 1963 (with discography pp. 461–497; with 55 photos on 32 art print plates by Elfriede Broneder and others).
  • Hannes Reinhardt: That's me: Ernst Deutsch, Tilla Durieux, Willy Haas, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Joseph Keilberth, Oskar Kokoschka, Heinz Tietjen, Carl Zuckmayer tell their lives . Piper, Munich 1970.