On the occasion of Albert Drach\\\'s 100th birthday – a vivid personal portrait of the great unorthodox thinker of Austrian literature.

When the writer and lawyer Albert Drach (1902-1995) was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize of the German Academy for Language and Letters in 1988, there was great astonishment even in usually well-informed literary circles. Albert Drach – who? A man who had caused a sensation in the 60s and 70s with novels such as "Das große Protokoll gegen Zwetschkenbaum" [The Massive File on Zwetschkenbaum, trans. Harvey I. Dunkle] and "Untersuchung an Mädeln", who was mistakenly hailed as the new Herzmanovsky-Orlando and finally forgotten again. But the Drach renaissance initiated by the Büchner Prize brought the decisive turning point. A new generation of readers and critics discovered in Drach (now aged 86) – whom the Times Literary Supplemement had counted in the same breath as Elias Canetti as being amongst the "most important avant-gardists in the German language" – one of the most original and radical writers after 1945. In 1988, Eva Schobel began her series of conversations with the author. She encountered a still raging but wise man who judged the Austria of the Second Republic, contemporary literature, and also his own life and work, with provocative severity.

Notes show us a direction: in the world – in music – in the music industry

Every note, whether produced by an instrument, the vocal cords or something else, holds many harmonics. They show us a direction, define the tone color and give the acoustic signal a sense of poetry. Not only notes get their own character and value this way. An encounter between people, every experience, every being also becomes a special imprint through tunes, thoughts and feelings. It’s these vibrations Giden Kremer's book talks about. It’s about musical reflections, about the power and effects of music. We also read about the things that form the everyday life of an artist. What does the inner and outer world of an artist look like, how does he look at his profession, his craft and not the music industry. And last but not least we learn about what happens at a rehearsal or a performance, why the artist chooses a certain cadence for a concert, what moves him during applause, how he copes with the loneliness and how he deals with the downside of success. They are bright and light observations, that invade your subconscious but often they’re, with a dignified irony which colors the event: harmonics!