After a long period of doubt and trial and error, I found this text, “Tenebrae”, in Paul Celan’s collection Sprachgitter (Grid of Speech) in the early 1990s. What I felt when I read it is indescribable, but I can say that it allowed me to resume my compositional work and not interrupt it any more.

The music is made up of closed-mouth sounds alternating with silence and brief exclamations, of syllables detached as if in a stammer, of breaths that seek each other, of a song that would only come to light painfully.

A new version is in preparation, as part of a choral opera including Über dem Dorn, and Einmal, da hörte ich Ihn