La Nuit obscure

Writing for a baroque ensemble, both instrumental and vocal, is of particular importance to me. So the first thing I did was to immerse myself in the very specific colours of the  heorbo, the violone, the baroque oboes and flutes, to feel this unique relationship to sound, from the strings played to the vocal strings. From then on, I had to find and propose a text that would suit these parts of shadow and light, as well as the purpose of a concert celebrating music as an art of the body and the spirit.
La Nuit Obscure by Juan de Yepes Álvarez, also known as John of the Cross, seemed an obvious choice. In this mystical poem, the soul, renouncing all visible light, can only be guided by love: it contemplates, lives its experience, purifies itself in short, telling us: “I have left and abandoned myself, freeing myself from all care among the white lilies.”