Song cycle for Bariton-Solo
Text: Nelly Sachs
Zürich 1975
Duration of performance: ca. 14'

To say it in Nelly Sachs's own words: 'Dying is the deeper'.

In the early 1970s, the loss was still palpable, two authoritative poetic voices had fallen silent: Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs. Their lines had risen before the terrifying scenario of a century shattered in its midst: '… and war is also in the night…where all glow ceases / when the earth finally receives it'. Her poetry does not lose its relevance. Ermano Maggini's first vocal works revolved around the inevitable and senselessly violent death. 'Teile dich Nacht' ('Divide thee night' 'Cleave thee, night') is his fourth composition which takes up poetry. This composition has not been premiered yet.

In Nelly Sachs's poems, like in the course of a river, the unspeakable killing is reflected: 'All drenched with death / the resurrection / the baptist.' The direct view of what has happened would be unbearable, but the poem offers a reflection, like the course of a river it reflects the unspeakable image, shows it only, and the images pass by the one who sits on the riverbank, as if she remained alive – she who is also the language and is looking at the reddened water, and this too is without return . And in the poet's words: the evening sun 'bounds higher and higher…' 'And already you have your escape baggage beyond / the border is open / but before they throw all your „homes“ / like stars through the window / do not come back / In the uninhabited dwell / and die'. In the poems of Nelly Sachs the music performs a dance of death, she calls it the 'flute skeleton'. Love, too, remains outside. And yet her voice awakens this sentence: 'But very secretly the distance is set in motion in her hand'. As if something were beginning to respond, a humming along on the tomb of language into a new silence… As if there were signs 'in which redemption dwells'. Sharing silence with language. Divide the night.

'The space under the feet pulled away / not to fly / only to endure the stars / that press for light'
'Before the walls of words / silence' – this is how the third poem set to music by Ermano Maggini begins, and ends with the lines: ' beyond, dance breaks into God's sphere of love / the star receives the wound of life'.

Ermano Maggini's compositions on the motif of the birds' flights also had something of this to report. With 'Der schwarze Vogel' (The Black Bird) he completed his flute trilogy in 1974.

In 1973 he had composed 'Schläfentäler' (Temples Vales) for baritone, flute, violoncello and speaker, and at the same time he wrote 'Meditazione su una tomba' (Meditation on a Tomb) – a composition for the six bells of Intragna, his most irrevocable sound module, which acoustically nourished his childhood. In the period 1971-1976 he wrote his first works for violoncello, 'Tre Canti sacri', and in 1976 'Atem' (Breath) for piano.

Ermano Maggini's fourth vocal work, 'Teile dich Nacht' (Divide thee night) comprises seven poems by Nelly Sachs. The first begins: 'Outside my window / the chirping bird / outside the barren window / the chirping bird / you see it / you hear / but otherwise/ I see it /
I hear/ but otherwise in the same solar system / but otherwise.' There is little to add. And yet, another line in the book of poems reads: ' Let me see the bird / that sings / or else I think love is like death…'
Nelly Sachs's poetry embodies precisely this field of tension – be it language or music.

Text: Evi Kliemand (2018/19)
Translation: Thomas Batliner 2021
Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna

Herausgeberin Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna
alle Rechte auch bei der Autorin
Edition: 22
Musikverlag Müller & Schade AG 3014 Bern
M&S 2606/01 ISMN M-979-0-50023-983-3



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