Quintett for violin, violoncello, clarinet B, flute and piano
Zurich 1978
Duration of performance ca. 3'

„The active 'Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern' (ENHB) represented Switzerland at the World Music Festival in Athens last September with an extraordinary contribution: 23 short compositions, analogous to the number of Swiss cantons, were to convey a kind of musical portrait of Switzerland…“. This is how the 'Tages Anzeiger' reports on March 6, 1980.

Ermano Maggini composed Canto IV for violin, violoncello, clarinet, flute and piano upon request from Urs Peter Schneider from the 'Ensemble Neue Horizonte' Berne. The composition was first performed at the World Music Festival in Athens/Greece in September 1979. The ENHB performed Canto IV also on further occasions, so on February 11, 1985, at the Lavaterhaus St. Peterhofstatt in Zurich. The interpreters were Viktor Müller, piano, Hans Peter Frehner, flute, Urs Bumbacher, violin, Hans Ruedi Bissegger, clarinet, Peter George, violoncello, under the direction of René Karlen; the performance took place as part of a concert of the International Society of New Music and the City of Zurich. Here Maggini's work sensibly met two works by Wladimir Vogel (1896 – 1984) who also wrote music history in the canton of Ticino.

Canto IV clearly illustrates a logical continuation of the compositional activity of Ermano Maggini. He had composed HIOB for wind quintet and his first orchestral work Torso II in 1977. The expansion of the ensemble was a burning theme to him, and he seized the opportunities that were offered to him. So the request probably came just right in order to put the idea to the test with a time-limited composition. Ermano Maggini was a master of the condensed musical form. Some of his works for solos take only a few minutes. The exchange of letters between Urs Peter Schneider and Ermano Maggini was also concise:

„Dear Ermano Maggini! I am looking for very short pieces by total 23 Swiss composers for our ensemble concert in Athens (World Music Festival IGNM 1979). Do you have something or would you write something for us? Binding setting: maximum seven musicians ¹⁾ Pf, Vl, Vc, Fl, C1 ²⁾, conductor, duration two minutes or less; if with text: it must be by a Ticino poet or in Ticino dialect, etc… please send prompt reply if yes or no; title, instrumentation etc. as soon as possible, complete performance material by November at the latest! I hope it will be possible; we will also use the program elsewhere and produce it for the radio. Hearty greetings Urs Peter Schneider“.

The composer's answer of September 19, 1978: „Dear Mr Urs Peter Schneider, referring to our telephone conversation I send you title and instrumentation and thus my commitment to participate in the World Music Festival 1979 in Athens. Title of the piece: Canto IV – its instrumentation: Pf, Vl, Vc,Fl,Cl. I thank you for your request, with kind regards Ermano Maggini“.

Who knows, Maggini may have decided at this moment to give the title CANTO also to the following compositions. In this way in the musical development the content could be subordinated to the project and at the same time he would be free of the respective title question, which was often requested before the work was created. It was a good decision. He was to write 21 CANTI.

On October 29, 1978, this letter followed: „Dear Mr Schneider, as agreed I send you here enclosed the score: Canto IV (1978). My musical language will perhaps cause you trouble at the beginning, I would be very happy if you could find access to it. I hope that I did not make any mistakes in the fair copy; I am currently under considerable strain. My instructions for dynamics and phrasing should be considered as a suggestion. I am at your disposal. You can reach me telefonically, in the morning between 7 h and 8 h, in the evening after 22 h, and all day from Saturday to Monday. Thank you in advance for your efforts with kind regards E.Maggini.“

Urs Peter Schneider answered on January 4, 1979: „Dear Ermano Maggini, Thank you very much for the piece and for the gracious dedication! We like it (after first reading) very much! If introductory text (and your biography) is necessary: until January 30,1979 to me. Everything OK.“

The musicians of the 'Ensemble Neue Horizonte' Berne already played some of these 23 works performed in Athens (including Maggini's Canto IV): at the 'Musikkollegium Zürcher Oberland' in Wetzikon on December 7, 1979, and in a podium concert in cooperation with the Presidential Department of the City of Zurich on March 3, 1980. Further perfomances followed.

The following statement can be found on the program sheet of the concert of February 11, 1985, in the 'Lavaterhaus' in Zurich: „My musical work is based on modal tone series with limited transposition possibilities. The more limited this transposition is possible, the more interesting the way is for me. From these modes arise the tension fields of the increased intervals, which are an elementary component of my music. At the same time, the polyphony of my works results in a linear homophone sound mass. The laws of tension within the harmonic-thought overtone series lead me to my own timbre, which ultimately determines my musical language. Ermano Maggini“

Walter Labhart in the 'Zürichsee-Zeitung' on February 15, 1985: „From an extensive cycle of interpretations in different arrangements of the Gospel of John Canto IV was performed, a miniature that takes a few minutes only. It is a composition that, through the frequent use of striking second steps, gave its modal tone series a sound stimulus, which was also secured by the coloristically amplified instrumentation.“

A deeper understanding of the sound matter, this intense listening, Maggini had already refined during the previous decades as a guitarist. He had also tested the twelve-tone sequences very thoroughly, for example in his atonal fugues which he developped and later discarded again. At the heart of his playing was always the immersion in the sound in all its characteristics, in the abundance as well as in the ascetic reduction. This sensitization of the hearing had a decisive effect on his later composing, it caused a measure, and this measure was already the breath and content of this congruent music as it appears in Canto IV as a quintet.

It remains open in what way a literary guiding idea flowed into the Canti – whether this guiding idea (also intended as a handout for the audience) was from the beginning intended as a musical vision by the composer did not simply remain pure sound thinking to the composer in order to avoid the risk literary illustration. It is to be assumed that a motif underlying the work in its purest form of thought and extreme feeling was always just music for him. This probably also applies to the spring of living water, this well in the Gospel of John chapter IV. The music – and so does Canto IV – may contribute its part to the content on a deeper level, but it does not illustrate, and nothing can be added. In the same year Maggini was working on Canto V for flute solo. Four years would pass before this cycle of Canti continued with Canto VI for orchestra. But what is time where it meets with the musical phenomenon? And what gratitude? – and what the inspiration?

Text: Evi Kliemand (2018/2021)
Translation: Thomas Batliner (2021)
Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna

Publisher Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna
rights also at the author
Edition: 21
Musikverlag Müller & Schade AG 3014 Bern
M&S 2605/01ISMN M-979-0-50023-982-6

< zurück