Matthias Johannes Grimm | To Every Captive Soul

Title: To Every Captive Soul (for unaccompanied SATB choir)
Composer: Matthias Johannes Grimm (b. 1982)
Text: First sonnet from 'La Vita Nuova' by Dante Alighieri
Composed in November 2018.

Score Available:
https://www.jwpepper.com/11409653.ite...

NOTES:
From first reading, Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) first sonnet from 'La Vita Nuova' ("The New Life") has left an indelible impression on me. It is a poem I return to, often; thus, it was fitting that I should set this intensely emotional piece of poetry to music.
Among these stanzas, a narrative emerges - taken from Dante's own life (according to tradition) and his unquenchable love for the enigmatic Beatrice Portinari). Beatrice is Dante's great Love, the resplendent embodiment of beauty, grace, kindness, and goodness. Her untimely death would immortalize her in Dante's works. The loss of his earthly muse would be an anguish he would carry until their reunion in his 'Paradiso.'
For me, this sonnet is a lucid fever dream, depicting the exaltation of new love and the melancholia of that love's ending. Where once joy reigned, despair now lingers - turning even the most cherished memories to something bitter.
Musically, I have attempted to express this through very deliberate means. Tonally, the piece does not end where it begins - as neither the poem ends where it began. I opted for a homophonic setting, as it was absolutely necessary to me that the words were preserved, per the request of the poet himself: "that they may write its meaning for me."