Quintet for flute in C and in G, oboe, B clarinet, English horn and bassoon
Lavadina 1977
Performance time ca. 12'/13'


The 24th February 1978 became an important date in Ermano Maggini's life since it was the day when HIOB for wind quintet, completed a year before, was performed for the first time. The premiere took place in the church St. Peter in Zurich which is very close to the living and working place of the composer. The encounter with the members of the Pro Arte Quintet Zurich, founded in 1972 by highly qualified young members of the Zurich Tonhalle orchestra, gave the impulse for this work. In 1978 the Pro Arte Quintet consisted of these musicians: Werner Zumsteg, flute, Francis Hunter, oboe, Pamela Hunter, clarinet, Niklaus Frisch, horn and Erich Zimmermann, bassoon. Werner Zumsteg was among those who continued to perform Maggini's compositions for flute solo in numerous concerts.

Ermano Maggini had early begun to occupy himself with the topic of breathing as a significant part of the creaturely organic voice and sound. That may be the reason that in 1976 the short precious composition ATEM (Breath) for piano solo preceded the wind quintet HIOB. The motive 'Job' (which is English for 'Hiob'), however, received further weightiness towards the end of the composer's life in a last not completed composition. It was determined by this motive in a staggering way.
Already in 1975 Ermano Maggini had set to music seven poems by the great German-Jewish poetess Nelly Sachs, the cycle „Teile dich Nacht“ for baritone solo. This work emphasizes the grievance and accusation insistently expressed by Job in the context of the events in the 20th century. In 1977, while he was composing the wind quintet, Ermano Maggini also wrote his first orchestral work TORSO II. Only a year later, in 1978, he ventured on his second quintet CANTO IV, a quintet for violin, cello, clarinet, flute and piano. It was premiered in 1979 by the ensemble Neue Horizonte, Berne, which had commissioned it. The violin, the clarinet and the piano were decisive for his last trio, TORSO VIII (1990) (cf. printed in this edition).
The quintet HIOB was broadcast on Radio DRS Zurich played by the original formation of the Pro Arte Quintet of which the tape recording is now in the Zentralbibliothek (central library) in Zurich. On the occasion of a memorial concert on 23rd July 2000 the composition was again impressively performed by the Afflatus Quintet Prague in the Chiesa Parrocchiale of Intragna, the composer's birthplace. The concert exclusively with works of Ermano Maggini was under the patronage of Ticino Musica and was recorded live on CD. The program sheet explained:
'… once again this concert presents this in its timbres and tonal range densely and homogenously built work, which clearly anticipates the orchestral compositions and the quartets. 'Hiob' or 'Job' as a motive was on the composer's mind throughout his whole life: on the one hand the human failure and Job's quarreling with God, on the other hand the praise of wisdom and the unfathomable creation. The work consists of five movements and ends in a Lento misterioso – morendo al niente (going out into nothingness).' (…) The same author writes in her biography about the work and life of the composer 'Just as the quintet about Job of 1977 opens the gate to the orchestral works, this motive closes the gate again. For a second time Job finds his way into the composer's work, the motive preoccupies him, haunts him, there are unanswered questions, the quarreling, rebelling, struggling and accepting…'

In one of the rare program notes on the occasion of a performance the composer writes: „My way of composing is based on modal tone series with a limited possibility for transposition. The more limited this possibility the more interesting the way is for me. These modes build the areas of tension within the raised musical intervals which are an elementary part of my music. At the same time the polyphony of my works produces a linear homophonic sound. The laws of tension within the harmonic-imaginary overtone sequence lead me to my own tone colour, which ultimately determines my musical language.“ (Ermano Maggini)

HIOB cannot be conceived as a narrative stream or as an epic sequence, it is the equation of beginning and end. It is a simultaneity in the sound pattern which causes the organically pulsating transparency and it is a flashing and darkening, which moves the body of sound. Thus the sound becomes the corpus. Only in this space-immanent abstraction will one get closer to the mystery and also encounter the self-critical antagonism of the composer, which incorporates an antithesis in this composition. The diatonic assimilates and is apt to change – it is a substructure that, when challenged, distances itself.
It is the struggle and strife between firm matter and its permeability to the fringing edge of its dissolution. It is not the bare revolution, it is the synthesis of this struggle, in this sense it is Job.


Text und Redaktion: Evi Kliemand (2017)
Translation: Thomas Batliner
Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna

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