Nicholas Lens & Nick Cave L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S 45rpm 2LP

Deutsche Grammophon announces the upcoming release of the album L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S, a project featuring the lyrics of Australian polymath Nick Cave matched with the music of Belgian composer Nicholas Lens. Having collaborated on Shell Shock in 2014, they joined forces again during the lockdown to create this new work.

Needing a librettist to author words for his music, he contacted Nick Cave. Lens recalls: "I wanted to work with someone who was fresh to the field of opera; someone who was most believable and authentic in the way they would use words. Nick was obviously that person."

Nicholas called me during lockdown and asked if I would write '12 litanies'. I happily agreed. The first thing I did after I put down the phone was search 'What is a litany?' I learned that a litany was 'a series of religious petitions', and realized I had been writing litanies all my life.

He wrote 12 lyrical pieces that tracked the birth, blooming, fracturing and eventual rebirth of a human being and which were "petitions to a divine maker demanding some sort of cosmic acknowledgement". To Lens, the term suggests "a pure form of poetry... a lyrical form of minimalism which might lead to a trance-like state", and he acknowledges that both men have entirely different ideas about what L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S means.

Lens cautions people not to think of the finished work, as being like a traditional, staged opera with well-defined characters and a clear narrative arc: "I would hate to irritate the opera purists! Maybe think of it more as a modest chamber opera of sleeping dreams, a trance trip that doesn't want to stop for an hour, a weird ride that takes the listener through strange turns..."