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- Karel Husa
Two Sonnets from Michelangelo (1971)
- Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
Programme Note
Composer Note:
As a student in Prague, I was seriously interested in music and painting and admired Michelangelo not only for his paintings, sculptures, frescoes, but also for his poetry. I was – and still am today – fascinated by the great strength in expression for which Michelangelo was striving in all his art. The poems are as powerful as everything this giant of the Renaissance has touched. It also seems to me that both sonnets “La notte” and “A Dio,” although over 450 years old, retain the same power; even more, they are so close to us in our everyday rushed life, which too, makes us forget all the beauties of this world. The music intends to express Michelangelo’s meditation rather closely, perhaps in the similar way Debussy musically followed Mallarme’s poem “L’Apres-midi d’un faune.”
— Karel Husa
As a student in Prague, I was seriously interested in music and painting and admired Michelangelo not only for his paintings, sculptures, frescoes, but also for his poetry. I was – and still am today – fascinated by the great strength in expression for which Michelangelo was striving in all his art. The poems are as powerful as everything this giant of the Renaissance has touched. It also seems to me that both sonnets “La notte” and “A Dio,” although over 450 years old, retain the same power; even more, they are so close to us in our everyday rushed life, which too, makes us forget all the beauties of this world. The music intends to express Michelangelo’s meditation rather closely, perhaps in the similar way Debussy musically followed Mallarme’s poem “L’Apres-midi d’un faune.”
— Karel Husa