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Titel: Menosgada
Composer: Mathias Wehr
Duration: 7.40 Min.
Grade: 3 (for Horn-Solo: 4)
Instrumentation: Wind Band & Horn Solo / Brass Band & Eb-Horn Solo

PROGRAM NOTES:
"The Landscape"
The Staffelberg is near Bad Staffelstein. The characteristic mountain, which provides natural protection on almost all sides, became one of the preferred settlement sites in north-eastern Bavaria for more than 5 millennia. It is a wonderfully powerful place and if you are there at quiet times, the Staffelberg reveals a mysterious mystical side.

"Menosgada"
About 200 BC Menosgada (city above the Main valley) came into being. Over the years, the Celtic town became a 49 hectare fortress, equipped with a 2800 meter long protective wall, with pitfalls and 3 gates. Around 25,000 stones had to be broken and around 2,000 trees felled to build the castle wall. Coin dies show that money was also minted here. A coin from western Switzerland and another from Asia Minor illustrate Menosgada's far-reaching trade relations.

"Arrival of the Celts"
The Celts, literally translated: the "brave", the "bold", who built Menosgada, defied the Roman Empire for many years. Roman authors often reduced the Celtic peoples to bloodthirsty barbarians who practiced cruel sacrificial rites: “They cut off the heads of fallen enemies and tie them around the necks of their horses. They give the bloody armor to their servants and have them displayed to the accompaniment of shouts of jubilation and songs of victory. At home they then nail these honorifics to the wall, just as if they had hunted game.” This is how the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described it in the first century BC. the Celts. But the Roman Empire was becoming ever more powerful and so the legendary Menosgada fortress had to be rebuilt around 50 BC. be abandoned.

"I dedicate this work to my friend Rupert Motschenbacher and his wife Kathrin." Mathias Wehr, November 2015