Who was/is Kristin Bauer-Horn ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Kristin Bauer Horn
Lullaby - 68 years of life
"Independent lyric poetry, which could definitely escape the music" (Klaus Budzinski)
In December 2006 Kristin Horn - in the early eighties she had discarded her maiden name - turned 70. In 1967, when she published her first of only a few LPs at the age of 68 and other chansons of her own, the Thuringian-born artist was one of the few women who appeared in public at the time. The 'Chanson-Poetin' (Max Nyffeler) saw herself as a political singer-songwriter, but she resisted the trend to be "as left as possible, and also to fit into a certain sound". In an interview with the magazine 'FM folk-michel' in 1989 she said: "The temptation that I personally wanted to escape and also escaped was to let myself be committed to what 'arrived'. And so after a short time I withdrew to the search for what I wanted myself. Because that was not the success! What I wanted was to say (sing) what I represented with my whole person. Basically, I am."
Her dream of becoming a pianist came to an end at the tender age of 13 after several tendosynovitis. At the age of 15 - with a special permit as the youngest German full student - she devoted herself to painting with Willi Baumeister, among others. At the age of 19 Kristin Bauer-Horn set her first texts to music and shortly after that she already had a programme on Südwestfunk through the cabaret and cabaret promoter Guy Walter. After she had met her husband at the age of 23, there was a break - until the Waldeck times came. Where, as the musicologist and journalist Max Nyffeler says, she gave the audience "poetically encoded chansons ... some nuts". The title song of her LP and lullaby are two examples of the mostly short "resignations at the piano" with which Kristin Bauer-Horn described her observations in society with great empathy. In an interview with the 'folk-michel' she said that her function as a singer-songwriter was "to make aware, to make aware, to make aware!!!!!!! Firstly with the text, and to the extent that it is equivalent to music, in that it has an interpretive effect. And of course with the person! Credibility is the be-all and end-all of the songwriter. [...] The songwriter has to stand up for what he sings with his whole person. Only in this way will he have the right to confront and oppose society."
Even though she didn't feel that she belonged to the scene at that time - "I never belonged anywhere in a scene. And that's what kept me free." -the artist nevertheless felt a certain sense of togetherness with the songwriters of the early sixties, to whom she even dedicated a song together with Alte Freunde!
Do you remember the old songs
we all sang back then.
our new songs back then
that sounded like new times?
Remember when we were burning?
singing and playing through the night
and felt us among friends
and found ears wide open?
Biermann, Mossmann, Degenhardt
Wader too and Master Hüsch,
would have liked to see us again
all around the same table.
In 1982, the House of Commons in Mainz awarded its German Cabaret Prize in the category 'Chanson' to Kristin Bauer-Horn, "who writes, composes and interprets unmistakable, time-critical and poetic songs which, almost unnoticed by the public, set standards for this genre". Her first LP '68 Lebensjahre und andere eigene Chansons' was released some years ago as a CD again.
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.1, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.1-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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