Wolfgang Rihm: TENEBRAE from ‘Deus Passus’ (2000)

Wolfgang Rihm

born 13 March 1952 in Karlsruhe (Germany)
died 27 July 2024 in Ettlingen (Germany)

First performance:
29 August 2000 in Stuttgart.
Wolfgang Rihm's work ‘Deus Passus: Passions-Stücke nach Lukas’ was created as part of the Passion 2000 project to mark the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth.
TENEBRAE is the final piece of ‘Deus Passus’.

Text:
Paul Celan, Tenebrae from: Sprachgitter, 1959

Celan's poem ‘Tenebrae’ appears in Wolfgang Rihm's ‘Deus passus’ at the end of the Passion of Jesus Christ and is intended as a conscious reminder of the Holocaust. The text and setting are intended to unsettle and look for a new religious interpretation of our time and its atrocities. Even sacred music can no longer be the same today as it once was, in different times and horizons of thought.
Celan's poem reverses the normal religious world view by having God pray to man in the dark times (in the ‘Tenebrae’) and not man to God. This is not a turning away from the religious, because a relationship of religious closeness remains, true to the Jewish-Christian tradition, which has always spoken of a hidden Adonaj, an unavailable and unspeakable holy ‘Lord’.
Formally, Wolfgang Rihm divides the setting of this upside-down prayer into three vocal blocks: a solo quintet, a four-part choir and a few instruments in the orchestra. It is important to note that the voice of Christ in the preceding Passion narrative ‘Deus passus’ by Wolfgang Rihm is sung by the five solo voices together. Theologically, this is perhaps reminiscent of the five wounds of Christ. However, it may also indicate that Christ is actually called Messiah. Messiah has always been understood as a title that refers not just to an individual, but to a new communal reality, such as the one that Jesus of Nazareth hoped for under the name ‘Kingdom of God’. Like Christ in his passion, the world to come is still suffering immeasurably in labour pains.

Listen here!

Listening companion:

Part 1
The prayer is opened by a lead singer (alto solo) who begins with a minor seventh on the word ‘Nah’. The alto and tenor voices of the choir respond in a melodious turn that ends on a third. The soloist quintet then enters with the joint A minor prayer call ‘Herr’: Christ himself - supported by a dark drum tremolo - raises his voice in prayer to HIM.

The words ‘Nah und greibar’ are then sung by the whole choir in alternating minor chords and mournful clusters.

In a dark, low register, the choir immediately continues to sing of a sorrowful state of being ‘gripped’, and again in A minor the solo quintet calls out its ‘Lord’. The voices of the choir increasingly intertwine until they become a unified body of sound. The five solo voices join in once again with their ‘Herr’, incorporating themselves into this sound.

Part 2
In homophonic calm, the choir calls us to pray in a new direction. ‘We are near’.

Two alto flutes anticipate the entry notes of the choral soprano and alto. The choral voices begin in unison. The density of the choral voices is characterised by second preludes. The tremolo of the bass drum, cellos and double basses lead to the ‘trough’.

First it is the basses, followed by the other choral voices, who proceed lamenting and screaming on their death march.

The choir then quietly states: ‘It was blood’. The solo alto emerges expressively forte, with a sixth leap downwards and a decimal leap upwards, immediately demanding indignant attention.

Without orchestral accompani-ment, the choir sings ‘Es glänzte’, while the alto chooses the present tense ‘glänzt’ for actualisation.

Part 3
Immediately afterwards, the 3 solo female voices take over the Celan text, accompanied by the alto flutes, while the call ‘Herr’ is now transferred to the choir, no longer in A minor alone, but alternating harmonically with each entry.

Alto flutes, trombone glissando, bass drum and strings take over the secondary sound from the voices in ‘empty’ resonance.

The mezzo-soprano and alto solo enter in ascending order over an A cluster: ‘We have drunk.’ The words ‘blood’ and ‘image’ are stammeringly mixed together, the choir adds its ‘Lord’ call to prayer.

Again and again, the mezzo and alto solos plead: ‘Pray!’. The music freezes into words.

At the end, everything culminates in a loud unison outburst from the choir, rising accelerando: ‘We are near.’

Then the orchestra also shouts an ‘b’ fortissimo into the room. The soloist quintet responds with ‘nah’ in a pianissimo and its own secondary sound. Everything fades into emptiness.


Nah sind wir, Herr, 











nahe und greifbar.




Gegriffen schon, Herr, 
ineinander verkrallt, als wär
der Leib eines jeden von uns
dein Leib, Herr.








Bete, Herr, 
bete zu uns,
wir sind nah.

Windschief gingen wir hin,
gingen wir hin, uns zu bücken
nach Mulde und Maar.






Zur Tränke gingen wir, Herr.




Es war Blut, es war,
was du vergossen, Herr.





Es glänzte.




Es warf uns dein Bild in die Augen, Herr.
Augen und Mund stehn so offen und leer, Herr.









Wir haben getrunken, Herr.
Das Blut und das Bild, das im Blut war, Herr.




Bete, Herr.



Wir sind nah.


We are close, Lord











Close and within reach.




Seized already, Lord,
clawed into our selves as though
the body of each of us were
your body, Lord.








Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
who are close by.

Against the wind we went there,
went there to bend
over hollow and ditch.






To drink we went there, Lord.




It was blood, it was
That which you shed, Lord.





It gleamed.




It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.
Our eyes and mouths stand open and empty, Lord.









We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.




Pray, Lord.



We are near.




(Translation by Scott Horton)