Minnesang for twelve voices / Musivus for orchestra

“Don’t expect anything simpler from me!” – Emmanuel Nunes (1941-2012) was an artist of almost intimidating ability and self-confident stubbornness – much like his teachers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.

Apart from early works and large musical drama projects, his output consists primarily of two large-scale cycles. The first contains nine works, including Minnesang (1975–76) for twelve vocal soloists: a mystical and spiritual work that translates the medieval art of "Minnesang" into modern terms and whose musical effects are founded on the intelligibility of the texts.

Nunes also composed a number of pieces not included in these cycles, among them the orchestral work "Musivus", which was written for Expo ’98 and premiered in a revised and expanded version in Cologne in 2001. "Musivus" is “a monument of spatialization” that can make the listener dizzy with its tiny fields of musical activity that bloom into a gigantic visual and acoustical mosaic that is extremely changing to a traditional, process-oriented way of listening.

A procudtion of Südwestrundfunks, licensed by SWR Media Services GmbH (1). A production of Westdeutschen Rundfunks Köln, licensed by WDR mediagroup GmbH (2-4).