Jean-Claude Schlaepfer

Lamentations de Jérémie

About the Work
'I, Jeremy, am sad at heart. There are no remedies to heal my sorrow...' This is the passage from 'Jeremy's Lamentations' which has, in all humility, inspired me, the composer states, and his sound portrait is indeed strongly inspired by that poignant sentence, showing the deep disarray and mental anguish of those who suffer from despair.
The multifarious string voices emerge almost imperceptibly from silence in the form of amorphous rustling sounds that slowly are amplified and developed as these sonic murmurs merge in an intensely dramatic manner leading to brutal fortissimi followed by explosive silences or, in some instances, by decrescendi symbolically reflective of submission, before resuming the lamentations that persist until the final breath.
This seven minute work composed in 2000 was written with the same intensity and sense of dramatic soberness that characterizes all of Jean-Clauden Schlaepfer's works.
The 'Lamentations of Jeremy', orchestrated for 14 strings (8 violins, 3 altos, 2 violoncellos and one contrabbass) is a precious and delicate masterwork, with a modernity of writing that reflects the tumultuous times in which we live.
Jean-Pierre Mathez

This work was premiered in St Moritz (Switzerland) in 2000 during the Festival of Suisse Musicians (composers) by the Camerata of Bern conducted by Heinz Holliger.