Julius Bürger: Good-bye Vienna (for voice and piano)

For voice and piano (1988)

When performing the orchestral arrangement available on rental, please use GSP84137VOC or GSP84137DGT.

Duration: 2 minutes

Language: German

I met Julius Bürger (then Burger) in 1994 in his tiny apartment in New York. He was recovering from a stroke and had lost his command of English and only communicated in the Viennese dialect of his youth. It was a dialect that had changed again since the near total annihilation the city’s Jewish population. Good-bye Vienna was written in 1988, six years prior to my visit, but when I visited him, I had the impression it was something he had only recently composed with the manuscript still sat on the music stand of his upright piano. He sat at the piano, played and sang, and just as he came to the last words, his hands leapt from the keyboard as if his fingers had been burnt and sobbed for a minute or two before singing the last line …so schnell vorbei. It’s a song that recalls the nature of the Viennese winehouse, a work of nostalgia and inner return. It reflects the loss that is caused by exile and the loss of a very personal past. The Exilarte center holds the musical estate of Julius Bürger.

— Michael Haas
Co-Founder of the Exilarte Center
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Lyrics
Einmal lebte ich in Wien, im schönen Wien.
Aber nun ist es nicht mehr mein Wien.

Wo sind die Zeiten, die frohen Zeiten,
da jung ich war voll Lebensmut?
Sie sind vergangen, so bald, so bald vergangen,
es war ein Traum, ich merkt’ es kaum.

Wo sind die Spiele des frühen Lebens?
Er strebt zum Ziele, kann es nicht fassen.
Das Glück in seiner Hand,
weiß nicht wie es entschwand.

Wo sind die Zeiten, die schönen Zeiten,
sie sind vorbei, so bald vorbei!

Once I lived in Vienna, in beautiful Vienna
But it is no longer my Vienna

Where are the games of early life?
When I was full of zest for life?
They have passed, so soon, so soon passed,
it was a dream, I scarcely noticed it.

Where are the playful games of early life?
One strives toward the goal, yet cannot grasp it.
Happiness in his hand,
not knowing how it slipped away.

Where are the days, the lovely days,
they are gone, gone so soon!

English Translation © by Exilarte, not singable.

About the Exilarte Edition
G. Schirmer/Wise Music’s Exilarte Edition exclusively publishes works by composers who were persecuted, forced into exile, or murdered by the Nazi regime. All original manuscripts of these works are archived in the Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in Austria.