O Notte - Z. Randall Stroope

Z. RANDALL STROOPE, American composer/conductor; SATB, violin, cello & piano; Michelangelo and Friedrich Rückert, poets; U.S. publisher Walton Music #1596; duration 4:50

COMPOSER'S NOTES (www.zrstroope.com)
Michelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti) is best known for painting, architecture & sculptures. What is less known is Michelangelo's poetry is that he wrote over 300 sonnets and madrigals, and was a leading literary scholar in Florence. It is difficult to imagine one single individual with such a dominant influence over architecture, painting, sculpture and literature. To this day, 500 years later, no one has matched this dominance. The opening line translates, "O night, o sweet though somber span of time!" The second portion of text is by the German literary scholar, Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) - "You are harmony and rest...You are yearning and its cadence."

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