Just finished a short piece for clarinet and string orchestra (or piano) based on the extraordinary Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, the 17th-century story of a young boy travelling through a world ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War and the appalling things he both sees and does ‘… in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust’ (Thomas Mann).
A vivid new translation by J. A. Underwood has just been published by Penguin.
