Sometimes opportunities appear, we take them and they lead us into unknown and unexpected places. This book is an example of just such an opportunity.

On a winter's day in February 1998, Lynda Lloyd invited Gil Chambers and me to provide Robert and Julius with an audience for a dress rehearsal prior to their St Petersburg performance of Die Winterreise. Audaciously, I asked if I could make some drawings. From these sketches came the images in this book.

I had never heard of Die Winterreise or indeed any other Schubert and, until the first exhibition of the paintings, this was my only experience of the music. I do not know German and so my drawings came from listening with my hands and making marks in my sketchbook. I had a pencil, a stick of thick graphite and a putty rubber to work with. Without looking at the paper in my sketchbook, I allowed my hands to work independently of my eyes. One sensory impression stimulating another. These translated themselves into marks of different weight and texture with the materials I had to hand. I describe this as a visceral, rather than a mental or emotional response.

A similar spirit of adventure created the paintings. A single unifying factor was the internal challenge to recollect the experiences of listening to this music in Robert and Lynda's Brecon barn. Chance governed the decision to mount the painting onto reclaimed slates, which had come from a church in Merthyr Tydfil, bought to roof our own barn and ending as surplus. I have always wanted to work with slate. I enjoy its subtle colours, even texture and sculptural structure. Somehow the slates were there when I was looking for a means of framing the images; they seemed perfect, even with their two sets of nail holes!

In the course of designing this book and finding the sponsors, publisher, sound recorders and printers, I have also learnt about the origins of Wilhelm Muller's poems and Schubert's music. It seems as if both the poems and the music had always had a life beyond themselves. When I talked to Robert about performing Die Winterreise, he described a very particular and special experience of the music; Julius' word was an 'Everest' of musical endeavour. Gradually the idea to bring different creative forces together in one place produced this book.

Literal interpretations of Die Winterreise highlight darkness, isolation and a longing for death in both the poetry and music. They seem to coincide with high points in the creativity of Muller and Schubert. For performers this piece is a perennial challenge. For me it is joining a journey begun nearly 200 years ago, for it seems that here is art that belongs to no one. Audiences continue the creative journey through their individual interpretation.

From the moment Ruth Lambert, at Y Tabernacl, Wales Museum of Modern Art, offered to show the paintings, serendipity has governed events. The list of acknowledgements bears witness to the Welsh nature of this enterprise. At times it has felt as if all those concerned were already awaiting such a project!

Pip Woolf
February 1999

Introduction by the Performers