After Rainer Maria Rilke, Giacomo Leopardi and Friedrich von Schiller, it is Paul Tymich who has the place of honour in this fourth cantata. The poet from Leipzig, whose famous Komm, Jesu, Komm! was set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, is obviously less famous than the artists I set to music in my earlier works of this genre, and I intended for this piece to refer more to Bach than to the author of the text. The choice of instrumentation (accordion and cello) refers to a form of continuo, but in a “modernised” version in which the accordion, with its organ-like sounds, and the cello that provides the harmonic foundation, function in a manner of overlapping with the choir part. In fact, the piece plays on the sonic ambiguities between the three entities, even if the overall form alludes to a chamber concerto in its numerous instrumental or indeed vocal soli. If the text is partially unintelligible in one section of the work, becoming instead a support for abstract writing, it reassumes its position on several occasions, and the prosodic variations that are applied to it structure the overall form of the piece.
Bruno Mantovani
Text of the Lutheran chorale:
Komm, Jesu, komm, mein Leib ist müde,
Die Kraft verschwind je mehr und mehr
lch sehne mich nach deine Friede;
Der saure Weg wird mich zu schwer!
Komm, ich will mich dir ergeben:
Du bist der rechte Weg,
Die Wahrheit und das Leben.
Drum schliess ich mich in deine
Hände Und sage, Welt, zu guter Nacht!
Eilt gleich mein Lebenslauf zu Ende,
Doch der Geist Wohl angebracht.
Er soll bei seiners Schöpfer schweben,
Weil Jesus ist und bleibt wahre Weg zum Leben.
Komm, Jesu, komnt, mein Leib ist müde,
Die Kraft verschwind je mehr und mehr
lch sehne mich nach deine Friede;
Der saure Weg wird mich zu schwer!
Komm, ich will mich dir ergeben:
Du bist der rechte Weg,
Die Wahrheit und das Leben.
Come, Jesus, come, my flesh is weary,
My strength will fail me more and more,
And I am longing for your peace;
The bitter way’s too harsh for me!
Come, I shall give myself to you;
You are the right way, truth and life.
I trust myself into your hands
And bid goodnight to all the world.
If my life’s course comes to the end,
My soul is well-prepared for this.
It should rise up to its creator
For Jesus is and shall remain
The true and only way to life.
Come, Jesus, come, my flesh is weary,
My strength will fail me more and more,
And I am longing for your peace;
The bitter way’s too harsh for me!
Come, I shall give myself to you;
You are the right way, truth and life.
