Bruno Mantovani

Cantate no. 4

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 Johann Sebastian 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. In fact, the piece plays on the sonic ambiguities between the three entities, even if the overall form alludes to a chamber concerto, in the 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