Sagittarius : Traum und Tod
 
Cornelius Waldner: Vocals, Piano
René P.: Guitars, Percussions
Marcel P.: 2nd Guitars, Arrangements
 
Composed by Cornelius Waldner
Lyrics by Uuno Kailas, German translation by Manfred P. Hein
Recorded at the Dungeon Studio (Rhenania) in 2009
Produced by Marcel P.

"Traum und Tod" will be released on an upcoming Cold Spring compilation soon, an alternate Finnish version will appear on the next Sagittarius full-length CD "The Kingdom Come". Feel free to listen to the song on Sagittarius's myspace site: http://www.myspace.com/marblecliff

Dear All,

the Sagittarius homepage has been revised and partly restructured. Besides that a slightly new design has been implemented.

Feel free to visit

http://www.sagittarius.de


Best regards,
Cornelius

Dear recipients of this message,

for all those who prefer mp3s to physical CDs yet still would like to support Sagittarius a possibility to download "Songs From The Ivory Tower" for a fair price has now been implemented to our Myspace site.

Klicktrack is a secure and reliable digital download store used by Cold Spring for several years now. Payment is easy, the money will definitely reach the artists, and you get high quality 320 kbit mp3s instead of the usual low quality rips.

To make it clear without condemning anyone, downloading our releases via blogs is definitely not a way to aid us, since we neither earn a single penny, nor even receive a single "thank you". Thus if you want to support us, either buy a physical copy of "Songs From The Ivory Tower" from Cold Spring Records, or make use of the Klicktrack download store.

Thanks in advance,
Cornelius

Dear All,

this is just a short note to let you know that the creation of the next Sagittarius album is proceeding very well. The raw composing process is finished, and the piano basics are mostly recorded. Next week Marcel and I will continue the recordings at his "Dungeon Studio".

I decided to change the album title from "Uni ja kuolema" to "The Kingdom Come" which is the English title of Stefan George's final poem book "Das neue Reich" according to the translation by Olga Marx and Ernst Morwitz. This new title reflects the general impetus of the new opus much better.

Many of the poems I set to music this time are taken out of that particular poem book, which has been my constant companion and spiritual influence for many years. Apart from that a few songs will be based on poems by Hermann Hesse, William Butler Yeats, Charles Baudelaire, Ernst Morwitz and the Finnish poet Uuno Kailas - a writer being rather famous in my second native land Finland, but almost unknown in the rest of the world, which is a shame because his poetry belongs to the strongest I am aware of.

Another poem set to music is "Lebenslied (An die Deutschen)" by the German exul poeta Karl Wolfskehl, which is one of the most impressive and haunting pieces of German poetry ever. Descending from one of the oldest Jewish families in Germany, Wolfskehl had an enormous impact on the intellectual life in Germany. A magnificent poet, close friend to Stefan George and one the leading experts on German mythology and medieval poetry, he was forced to go to exile in 1933. This particular poem is a long reflection on his homeland and his spiritual influences, and both a song of valediction and distant hope.

You may expect the album to be released by Cold Spring Records in 2010.

Dear All,

Dear All,

Sagittarius is planning to produce an official T-shirt, limited to max. 40 copies. It will feature a pocket print on the left chest, containing the logo, the helmet emblem and the slogan “Songs of Dream and Death”, printed on a high quality Super Premium T-Shirt by Fruit Of The Loom. Please find attached the pocket print design.

To respect the different tastes regarding T-Shirts we are offering the opportunity to let you choose your T-Shirt colour. Four colours will be available – black, brown, navy blue and bottle green.

Each T-Shirt will cost 15 Euros (including postage in Germany and Europe), customers residing outside of Europe will have to add another 5 Euros.

For each sold T-shirt, Sagittarius will donate 2 Euros to the “Stefan George-Gesellschaft e.V.”, a cultural organisation dedicated to a poet Sagittarius’s recent musical work is based on.

To place your (binding) order, please reply to this message and send your name and address as well as the requested T-Shirt size (S-XXL) and colour. We are accepting orders until July 25th, 2009.
 

Best regards,
Cornelius / Sagittarius

Sagittarius contributed the track "Erio (Version 2006)" to a compilation CD called "Return To The Darkness", released by the Malaysian Black Metal label Kayangan Distribution.

Please check http://www.myspace.com/kayangandistro666 for further information.

Sagittarius is a German project headed by Cornelius Waldner, and it's been around for a couple of years, with a few limited releases. This album, however, is their first on a bigger label like Cold Spring. What we get is about three quarters of an hour worth of calm neoclassical and neofolk, with piano as the dominant instrument. Most of the tracks are based on German poems, but with a bit of English and instrumental work thrown in as well.

The poems cover a range of topics, ranging from traditional romanticism, melancholia, and modern cultural criticism. This unites different areas from conceptual spectrum of neofolk, which is nice to see. The album certainly isn't hung up on a single theme. The variation in terms of music isn't very great, being based as said on piano, with the occasional addition of flute, cello, and guitar, sometimes provided by guest artists like Marcel P. (Allerseelen) and Damiano Mercuri (Rose Rovine E Amanti). However, in this case I don't think it is a negative point for the album, which has a focused flow, somewhat comparable to that of Current 93's Soft Black Stars. The vocals are also varied, with guest singers like Troy Southgate (HERR) and Herr Twiggs (Kammer Sieben). I must say the performance of each of these guest performances varies in quality, but it never detracts from the overall atmosphere of the album.

I can be fairly brief about this one: it's simply a very decent album. Certainly recommended for neofolk lovers, especially if you enjoy a calmer and perhaps distinctly German style, comparable to Orplid or Forseti. However, if you're not particularly fond of neofolk or neoclassical, this album most likely won't change your mind.

Dear All

Having worked passionately on the new Sagittarius full-length CD "Uni ja Kuolema" ("Dream and Death") during the last couple of weeks I would like to inform those who are concerned about the latest updates.

I moved into a new flat recently, and the new surrounding is much inspiring. During the last couple of weeks I composed three new tracks. "Der Heautontimoroumenos", a song based on a well-known poem by Charles Baudelaire (I will use the German translation by Carlo Schmid), is a rather dramatic tune in the vein of faster pieces like "Totentanz auf Köppelsbleek" and "Cupio Dissolvi". "The Song of Wandering Aengus" is a setting of a poem by William Butler Yeats - mid-paced and stylistically comparable to tracks like "Trunkene Flut". The latest song, "Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme" is a setting of yet another poem by Stefan George - I think it is one of the saddest and melancholic tunes I composed up to this point.

It is still far too early to fix a release date of the new album - but if the composing process continues to be as smooth as it is right now I am quite optimistic that we can start working on the fine arrangements in summer or autumn.


Best regards from the Ivory Tower
Cornelius