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La notte

Instrumentation

vocal sextet or

mixed choir

 

Duration

6 Minutes 

 

commissioned by

Compagnie Bischoff

 

Publisher

Donemus

 

Year

2011

 

Kasia Głowicka’s La Notte stands as a compelling response to the commission from Campagnie Bischoff, offering a thoughtful epilogue to Franz Liszt’s Via Crucis. Michelangelo wrote the text for his funerary monument for Giuliano de’ Medici in Florence. Part of this monument is La Notte, a sleeping woman as an allegory of the night. Liszt saw Michelangelo’s creation when he first visited Italy in 1838/39. He used the epigram as the motto for his piano piece Il penseroso (The Thinker), a funeral march included in the cycle Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie.

Drawing inspiration from the mystical character of Liszt’s final works, Głowicka anchors her composition in the same profound text that once moved Liszt himself in his previous works —Michelangelo’s sonnet La Notte:

Caro m’è ‘l sonno, e più l’esser di sasso,
mentre che ‘l danno e la vergogna dura;
non veder, non sentir m’è gran ventura;
però non mi destar, deh, parla basso.
—Michelangelo Buonarroti
 
My treasure sleep, and more, my being stone,
while hurt and the humiliations last;
and sightless, soundless, is to me the best;
so do not raise me, speak your meanings low.

(trans. Mark Daniel Cohen)

In this work, Głowicka explores the liminal space between silence and sound, creating a musical landscape that mirrors the quiet intensity of night. Her composition weaves together delicate textures and nuanced phrases, engaging with themes of solitude, endurance, and transient peace.The piece integrates quotations from Bach’s music, echoing Liszt’s own practice of embedding Bach’s works into his compositions.
 

—Mathieu Heinrichs

PERFOMERS

Compagnie Bischoff 

conducted by Romain Bischoff

Performances:

Premire: 3/09/2011 Flagey,

Klara Festival Brussel

subsequent performances:

Gaudeamus Festival, 09.2011

Slow Listening Festival, 25.11.2011

PRESS

The semi-theatrical, gripping performance by the fourteen singers of Compagnie Bischoff, with pianist Ronald Brautigam, added new dimensions to this visionary music (…) with Kasia Głowicka’s impactful, expressive and musically deep choral work.”

Trouw