Vivemo

 

Instrumentation: 

SATB choir with divisi

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Text: 

Dante Alighieri - Inferno, Canto IV, 40-42

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Language:

14th Century Tuscan

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Duration: 

5 minutes

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Dedication:

Commissioned by Eduardo García-Novelli and the Carthage Choir for their 2018 European tour

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Date:

2017

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Premiere: 

January 19th, 2018 by Eduardo García-Novelli and the Carthage Choir - Old Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, Hungary

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Program: 

The text of this piece is a tercet from Dante's Inferno. In Canto IV, Dante and Virgil enter Limbo, the first circle of Hell, in which the unbaptized souls of the guiltless linger for eternity. It is here that Virgil himself is also bound and he says to Dante:

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"Per tai difetti, non per altro rio,

semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi

che sanza speme vivemo in disio."  

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translation by Allen Mandelbaum

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"For these defects, and for no other evil,

we now are lost and punished with this:

we have no hope and yet we live in longing."

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Musically, I sought to emphasize the somber sense hopelessness felt by these souls as they drift through Limbo. The pervasive ostinato rhythm which is chanted throughout the piece evokes both the cyclicality of an eternity without salvation and the repetitiveness of a human heartbeat—the rhythm which drives our own lives. The title of the piece, Vivemo, means "we live" and suggests an analogy between the fictitious souls of Dante's Limbo and our existence as living beings, who wander through a seemingly hopeless world and yet still manage to hold on to our desires.

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