Arrigo Boito

Scorre per gran pietà (Schmerzensreiche Pietà)

On the occasion of the ceremonial unveiling of the Bellini monument on August 8, 1886 in Piazza Bellini in Naples, his former fellow student and friend Francesco Florimo published the Album Bellini: a book for which he had asked numerous celebrities of musical life as well as contemporary witnesses of the revered Vincenzo Bellini, who had died unexpectedly on September 23, 1835 at the age of only 33, for contributions, which they willingly provided - including Charles Gounod and Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian writer and opera composer Arrigo Boito also contributed to the Bellini album. As a later-born composer, he was unable to report any personal memories of Bellini; he provided a few mythologically allusive sentences as well as an eleven-line poem, which he did not set to his own music (out of respect), however, but instead set to a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. Boito transcribed the chorale (Partita I) and the first of the six chorale variations (Partita II) from BWV 766 - the others were hardly suitable for his transcription for voice and piano; his contribution to the album was also intended to remain concise and emphatic. Boito's reverence and respect for both Bach and Bellini is expressed in his transcription. His Italian poetry, created in retrospect to Bach's music (or rather the vocal line Boito formed from it) and underlaid with it, is appropriate to the newly created work - an Italian lament from the end of the 19th century. (Guido Johannes Joerg).

The edition is underlaid with the original Italian text by Arrigo Boito and a German-language version of the poem by Siegfried Carl.