Canzoni alla notte (1974)
(for baritone and orchestra)

The Canzoni alla notte were written for Siegfried Lorenz in 1974 as a commission from the Gewandhaus and the City of Leipzig. The expressive poems of the Italian Nobel laureate Salvatore Quasimodo, which I compiled for this work, particularly appealed to me because they sing of a basic theme with the greatest wealth of ideas: the night. The five precious poems are different in colour and form. This imaginative variety is what the music tries to capture and reproduce. I have therefore chosen a structure in which the singing voice can be clearly followed and is treated in a cantabile to declamatory manner. The various vocal techniques are at the service of expressiveness. It is sung, spoken, shouted and whispered in order to make the intellectually and emotionally demanding texts as clear as possible. The orchestra is a partner, supporting the different moods of the poems without ever being used in a naturalistic way. The Canzoni alla notte should be understood as a concerto for baritone and orchestra.

Ruth Zechlin, May 1976