Rihm: Vigilia, für 6 Stimmen und Ensemble

Vigilia comprises the Seven Passion Texts which Rihm composed between 2001 and 2006 for the Singer Pur vocal sextet and which were gradually set to music and initially performed as individual texts. The first performance of the sixth and seventh Passion texts was simultaneously that of Vigilia, a work supplementing the seven Passion texts with instrumental intermezzi. The final piece “unites the voices and instruments in a plea for forgiveness” (Clemens Goldberg).

“Contemporary sacred music was thus linked with compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, from the old choir-books of the Vatican libraries.

In Catholic liturgy, vigils are kept at night in the form of written epistles or prayers, intended as preparation for special church feasts – Easter in particular – in the concentration of darkness. Rihm refers to this rite and the old, musically historical tradition of the responsorial cycle as exemplified by such composers as Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613). Rihm’s Passion motets reveal a certain kinship with Gesualdo’s famous settings, although Rihm’s are separated by instrumental intermezzi.

Like Gesualdo, whose extreme use of chromatic harmonies and sonic progressions probed the limits of tonality and polyphonic setting, Rihm allows the texts’ messages to come to the fore in expressive musical twists and turns and an atmospheric density, spontaneously reminiscent of Gesualdo’s boldness.”

Andreas Günther

Translation Copyright © Grant Chorley

(Reproduction of the text in any form is only permitted with prior written permission of the author.)