Today & Forever: Song Cycke Based on Goethe

The Goethe cycle Heut und ewig (Now and Forever) is E. Pepping's most extensive secular choral work. It was first performed by Spandau choir on the occasion of the honouring of Goethe by the municipal authorities of (west) Berlin on 16th July 1949. In fact it's first performance - as truly befitted Goethe bicentennial year - had been planned for the great Goethe celebrations in Weimar; but this pan-German plan was overtaken by political events whilst the work was still being written. For a west Berlin choir, a journey to the Soviet Occupied Zone would have been not only political folly but also dangerous. Thus Pepping's Goethe cycle unintentionally became part of the cultural and political labyrinth at the time of the foundation of two German states, both of which liked to view and portray themselves as the intellectual heir of the great German poet...