Mirco De Stefani: Sieben Lieder für Gesang und Klavier nach Gedichten von Paul Celan

The Sieben Lieder, composed in 2014, are the outcome of reflection on the poetics of Paul Celan, an author who in my experience has been a powerful catalyst for musical ideas. While in my previous compositions – Adagio a Celan for organ (1998), Celan for violin (1999), XII Preludi for cello (2000) – the poetry acted as a hypogram underlying the musical discourse and intrinsic to it, in the Lieder we have the direct setting of verses that by means of song come into synchrony, or rather, diachrony, with the scansion of the music. Since the poetic presence is a latent force in the unconscious, an unfathomed voice always ready to reveal itself, a direct maieutic action is necessary for the music to act at the appropriate time, without any other form of external need. The idea of composing the Sieben Lieder cycle came to me on reading Laura Darsié’s book Il grido e il silenzio (Mimesis Edizioni, 2013), dedicated to the irreconcilable encounter between Celan and Heidegger. The irreducible incompatibility between the thought of the German philosopher author of Sein und Zeit and Celan’s desperate sensibility becomes a challenge to the possibility of a conversation between poetry and music: an event always at risk of mutual prevarication and inadequacy, where the encounter-clash risks ending in annulment or inconclusive digression.