Tenebrae

Crucifixió blanca - M. Chagall

In the 1950s, the Romanian poet Paul Celan had settled in Paris, fleeing the Communist regime. He had not been able to flee Nazism, and had been confined, together with his parents, in the Chernivtsi ghetto. Without being able to do anything to prevent it, his parents were transferred to a concentration camp, where they were killed; he survived after passing through several camps himself. His life in peacetime was not easy either. He was hospitalised several times in psychiatric institutions, and took his own life in 1970.

In 1959 he published the collection Sprachgitter [Speech-Grille], which included the poem Tenebrae, of a devastating desolation. The verses place us within the Passion of Christ — Tenebrae is present in the Jewish tradition too, though naturally from a different perspective — ; Christ is abandoned, as is the poetic voice — representing so many other tortured voices — and the roles have been reversed: it is Christ who must pray to men.

A couple of years before the poems were published, at a meeting in Paris, the poet asked the composer Aribert Reimann to set Tenebrae to music. Reimann, who had already set other Celan poems before, was hesitant. In some sense, he felt that this poem should remain as it was: a poem, without any further interference. Until he met Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with whom he was not only a regular collaborator but a friend for decades.

In November 1959, Reimann composed Tenebrae, and over the following months he set four more Celan poems; these are the Fünf Gedichte von Paul Celan, a collection in which Tenebrae occupies the central position. It is a hard poem from which emerges a difficult song; I invite you to listen to it calmly; yet, beauty is not absent. The recording is by Fischer-Dieskau and Reimann, probably from 1969 (they gave the premiere together in 1962).

I wish you a happy Easter!

Tenebrae