The title of this exhibition is borrowed from a poem, a sonnet by the early Renaissance Italian poet Francis Petrarch (born Francesco di Petracco). The Baroque Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi set the poem to music in 1638. Three and a half centuries later, Jordi Savall recorded that now famous motet together with his wife, the singer Montserrat Figueras. The Catalan gamba player and musicologist owes much of his reputation as a maestro of ancient music to our neighbouring city of Basel. What makes us remember such old music, such old poetry? The title of the exhibition speaks of things serene and far away, embedded in the night, even though both poem and music date from a period fraught with unrest and war. Perhaps that sense of peace is what we, too, are yearning for amid all the imponderables of the present, which after all is what prompted the exhibition.
curated by Simon Maurer
