Im Ocean der Sterne

Concert: 200 Years of West-Eastern Divan

Guillem Palomar

Im Ocean der Sterne

Composer‘s Note

Goethe’s “Wo hast du das genommen?” is a deeply mystical poem on every level. It opens with the revelation of a question that is left unanswered and then leads us to rebirth within the ocean of the stars, past the shepherds’ hills and nights of shuddering, to the horizon of illusory seas: a journey whose end once again is its own beginning, creating an eternal circle. Goethe uses beautiful words to describe the terrible state of our condition, our exile from Paradise—the principal theme of the mystical tradition in the West and in the East. In Hafiz there is a verse: “The gate of decision is closed to me as it is to you.” The horizon, the gate, the “royal seal of our existence,” as Goethe describes it later in the Divan, represent the limit of human understanding, where angels walk back and forth, like linesmen in a football game.

In my setting, Hafiz and Goethe’s preference for the circular form is expressed in permanent sequences that, through the addition of new notes, gradually expand the harmonic space. The unanswered question mentioned earlier, as well as the “ocean of stars,” are represented by the absence of a tone center, in such a way that when it is finally heard, no one knows anymore if it is the beginning or the end, if it creates ease or tension.