Nihil est toto

About

First performance: 3 November 2018, Kirche Waisenhaus Basel. Florian Helgath with the Zürcher Sing-Akademie.

Commissioned by the Zurich Sing-Akademie for the concert series “Un… endlich” in Zurich and Basel. In the piece “Nihil est toto”, which will be premiered with this program, Cyrill Schürch has incorporated two different texts. On the one hand a section from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which looks at the eternal flow and change of the entire universe, and as a juxtaposition a text by Nietzsche, which focuses on a single person. The emotion of “desire” does not want the eternal return of the same, but eternity itself, as described by Ovid, also its passing away and re-emergence. In the first part, this flow is translated musically as if in waves, the polyphony of the cosmos penetrates through the music, while the second part rather declamatorically depicts Nietzsche’s poem.

Listen (Excerpt, 0′-2’53”)

Preview Score

Text

Nihil est toto
Nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe.
cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans formatur imago;
ipsa quoque adsiduo labuntur tempora motu,
non secus ac flumen; neque enim consistere flumen
nec levis hora potest: sed ut unda inpellitur unda
urgeturque prior veniente urgetque priorem,
tempora sic fugiunt pariter pariterque sequuntur
et nova sunt semper; nam quod fuit ante, relictum est,
fitque, quod haut fuerat, momentaque cuncta novantur.

Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD): Metamorphôseôn liber XV, 177-185

Das trunkene Lied
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? »Ich schlief, ich schlief –,
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: – Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. Tief ist ihr Weh –,
Lust – tiefer noch als Herzeleid: Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit –, – will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!«

Friederich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900): from «Also sprach Zarathustra»