Text by Gottfried Keller
Lavadina and Zurich 1989
Performance time ca. 4'30''


The City of Zurich commissioned 17 works for the Gottfried Keller centenary. Two open air concerts, one in the market place Oerlikon the other in Albisgüetli, were arranged as part of an event in honour of Gottfried Keller on 20th June 1990. The centrepiece for the choir of the Kantonsschule Wiedikon Zurich under the direction of Stephan Meier was the premiere of the composition „Evening Song to Nature“ by Ermano Maggini after a text by Gottfried Keller (1819 – 1890). The work was also premiered at the Synod in Horgen.
There is more to read about the event in the annual report of the Kantonsschule at which Maggini taught.
At the Song Festival in the Schützenhaus Albisgüetli on 30th June 1990 the following choirs appeared: ars cantata, Jürgen Kantorei, Canta Musica and Kantonsschule Wiedikon KSW. The concert programs say: the choir of the KSW appeared at the open air concert of the suburbs at 15 o'clock and at the concert of the city centre in the Bärengasse at 16.30 (bridge Schanzengraben). Also the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported on the event on 2nd July 1990.
Some weeks later, on 31st August 1990, the choir of the KSW took part in the annual Summer Serenade under the direction of Marlis Moser and Stephan Meier, after it had sung at the annual spiritual concert in spring. The annual school report 1990 writes about it: It is not easy to keep track of so many performances. It may have rung in Gottfried Keller's ears (God bless him!) in his office in the town hall because Ermano Maggini lived next door. Maggini's setting of Keller's poem for choir was commissioned in 1989 for the June Festival in Zurich. The score mentions Lavadina/Zurigo as places of origin. In order to avoid the noise of nearby construction works in his refuge in Intragna/Ticino, he preferred to retreat for his creative period during the school holidays to the old studio house of Lavadina in Triesenberg high above the Rhine Valley. This was also true for the year 1990 as his notes in the scores prove.

At that time we were reading Gottfried Keller's poems and Ermano Maggini fairly quickly chose „Evening Song to Nature“. He had gained the familiarity with Gottfried Keller already early on through his literary versed writer friend Hans Schumacher, whose best-known book „Gang durch den Grünen Heinrich“ (A Survey of Green Henry) was one of his valued books. In one of the last chapters Schumacher writes: „The desire 'not to be there any more' is intensified when one day, on an official errand, Heinrich inadvertently gets into the area of his youth. (…) 'Swarms of furious bees were buzzing over the flowery wilderness' … the errand led Heinrich to a little valley where the memories go back again (in Gottfried Keller's words:) 'when I felt the desire to walk in solitude. So I came to a narrow, secluded valley between two green mountain ridges where it was so quiet that one could hear the air whisper in the distant treetops. All of a sudden I recognized the valley as belonging to the homeland, though it was so simple of design that it did not present a peculiar form anywhere, and no human building showed itself to the eye. About in the middle of the way that cut through the little valley, I threw myself on a small green earth wave …' “
As we know,Gottfried Keller had written two versions of his 'Green Henry', and Schumacher continues to comment on Keller's text: „Up to this line the two versions of 'Green Henry' are essentially identical. In the first version he dies: 'and quite fresh and green grass has grown on his grave'. In the second version – the parallel is clear – he wants to lie under the 'green earth wave', under the 'gentle earth bosom'.“ So far Hans Schumacher in his 'Gang durch den Grünen Heinrich'. Seen in this way, the 'Evening Song to Nature' is a supporting motif, deeply rooted in the life of developing and decaying, not a idyll of nature. It is to be understood as a work that Ermano Maggini – as if it had to be so - had composed one year before his (for him and for all) unexpected and too early passing. Words can hardly accompany his music better that year than these stanzas by Gottfried Keller do:

Swathe me in the green covers,
lull me to sleep with your purring voice,
you may wake me up in good time
with your day's young glow!
I indulged in you and weary I am,
my eye is dull of your splendour.
Now it is my only desire
to rest in the dream, in your night. (…)
And should find me the end,
cover me quickly with grass;
oh blessed death and disappearance
in the quiet of your homely place.

Text and editing:
Evi Kliemand (2018/2019)
Translation: Thom Batliner Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna

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