A day when everything feels just right: sunshine, friendly people, and delightful leisure time. Or perhaps pouring rain, solitude, and a good book in hand. Maybe even a challenging mountain hike along steep paths, crowned with a sweeping view from the summit.
The via-nova-chor Munich offers musical suggestions for such a day in its concert—one in which the perfect wind is blowing—and playfully invites you to give shape to your own ideas.
With works by Jean Absil, Jean Françaix, Nana Forte, Hans Schanderl, Arne Mellnäs, Paweł Łukaszewski, and others, we gaze out to sea, stroll through an oriental market, admire ancient works of art, visit a zoo, and dare to dance.
Nana Forte: On a day, when the wind is perfect
On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.
My eyes are like the sun that makes promises:
the promise of life that it always keeps each morning.
The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great tenderness.
There is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?
Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious he makes our lips.
On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.
Today is such a day.
Gerald Finzi: I praise the tender flower
I praise the tender flower,
That on a mournful day
Bloomed in my garden bower
And made the winter gay.
Its loveliness contented
My heart tormented.
I praise the gentle maid
Whose happy voice and smile
To confidence betrayed
My doleful heart awhile;
And gave my spirit deploring
Fresh wings for soaring.
The maid for very fear
Of love I durst not tell:
The rose could never hear,
Though I bespake her well:
So in my song I bind them
For all to find them.
Jean Francaix: Cantiques des colonnes (Hymns of the Columns)
Gentle columns, oh
Orchestra of spindles!
Each one offers up its
Silence in unison.
-What do you carry so high,
Radiant equals?
-To flawless desire
Our studious graces!
We sing in unison
That we bear the heavens!
O sole and wise voice
That sings for the eyes!
Behold what candid hymns!
What resonance
Our limpid elements
Draw from the light!
So cold and golden
We were pulled from our beds
By the scissors,
To become these lilies!
From our crystal beds
We were awakened,
Metal claws
Have fitted us.
To face the moon,
The moon and the sun,
Each of us was polished
Like a toenail!
Servants without knees,
Smiles without faces,
The beauty before us
Feels her legs pure.
Piously alike,
Noses beneath the headband
And our rich ears
Deaf to the white burden,
A temple upon our eyes,
Black for eternity,
We journey without the gods
Toward divinity!
Our ancient youth,
Satin-smooth flesh and beautiful shadows,
Take pride in the subtleties
Born of numbers!
Daughters of the golden ratio,
Strengthened by the laws of heaven,
A honey-colored god falls upon us
And falls asleep.
He sleeps content, the Day,
Which we offer each day
On the table of love
Spread across our foreheads.
Incorrupible sisters,
Half-burning, half-cool,
We took as dancers
Breezes and dry leaves,
And centuries by the dozen,
And peoples of the past,
It is a profound yore,
A yore that is never enough!
Under our shared loves,
Heavier than the world,
We pass through the days
Like a stone through the waves!
We walk through time,
And our radiant bodies
Take ineffable steps
That leave their mark in fables…
Jean Absil: Bestiaire (Bestiary)
I. The Dromedary
With his four dromedaries,
Don Pedro of Alfaroubeira
Traveled the world and marveled at it.
He did what I would like to do
If I had four dromedaries.
II. The Crayfish
Uncertainty, oh my delight,
You and I are leaving,
Just as crayfish leave,
Backward, backward.
III. The Carp
In your fishponds, in your lakes,
Carp, how long you live!
Does death forget you,
Fish of melancholy?
IV. The Peacock
As it spreads its tail, this bird,
Whose feathers trail along the ground,
Appears even more beautiful,
But reveals its rear end.
V. The Cat
In my home, I wish for:
A woman with a sound mind,
A cat wandering among the books,
Friends in every season
Without whom I cannot live.
Pavel Lukaszewsky: Like as the waves
Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before
In sequent toil all forwards do contend
Nativity, once in the main of light
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d
Crooked eclipses ‚gainst his glory fight
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand
Hans Schanderl: Bazar
Gerald Finzi: Nightingales
Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long!
Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams
A throe of the heart
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound
For all our art
Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn
Arne Mellnäs: Bossa buffa
Kimmt sche hoamli die Nacht (Softly the night comes home) (Arrangement: Stefan Grünfelder)
Softly the night comes home,
my day’s work is done;
and I love to sing, when I’m alone,
a quiet little song for myself.
And how good this stillness feels,
as I walk the small path through the fields.
Even the little fish in the meadow brook
no longer leaps after a fly.
If only I could spend an hour
with the one dearest to my heart.
For in my heart there is no other —
oh, how happy I am.
Max Reger: Abendlied (Evening Song)
Softly the day withdraws to rest;
Crimson red for one last time
Glows the forest, as if kissed
By the sun’s warm golden shine.
White veils of mist are rising,
Billowing upward from the lake;
All around is stillness, silence,
Not a sound my ears awake.
And now all weary, wandering
Souls are striving home once more;
For evening calls with peace and healing,
And night with gentle rest in store.
And into distant worlds and spaces
My soul drifts out, serene and wide,
As though preparing, softly, gently,
For its eternal flight homeward.