Píseň písní - CD

This audio CD presents The Song of Songs, part of the Old Testament of the Bible, interpreted by Magdaléna Borová and Petr Lněnička. The text of these Jewish wedding songs has its earliest roots in ancient Egyptian lyric poetry and is among the best-known festive compositions passed down orally in the Middle East since antiquity. This beautiful love story, strongly erotic yet also highly symbolic and allegorical, explores the mystery of love, its beginnings, difficulties, maturation, courage, intoxication, harmony, incorruptibility and nobility. There are few interpretations in world literature that are both artistically sensitive and faithful to the original. Czech readers and listeners are fortunate to have Jaroslav Seifert’s excellent poetic rendition, first published in the late 1950s. Also known as the Song of Songs, the work was traditionally attributed to King Solomon, supposedly inspired by his marriage to an Egyptian princess. The Old Testament regards Solomon as the author of 1,005 songs and 3,000 proverbs, but The Song of Songs differs markedly from his other compositions: it belongs not to wisdom literature but to love lyric poetry. Solomon’s authorship can neither be proved nor disproved. The song was read aloud in temples and remains among the texts recited during Jewish Passover, while ordinary people also sang it in inns, fields during the harvest and vineyards during the grape harvest. The recording is directed by Jindřiška Nováková, with music by Jiří Šlupka Svěrák, and contains three parts.