"vo piangendo io tra voi" was written in response to the sonnet "Strani rupi, aspri monti, alte tremanti" by the 16th century Neapolitan poet Luigi Tansillo. “Strani rupi” is one of a pair of sonnets written in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption of the Campi Flegrei on the 29th September 1538, which dramatically altered the surrounding landscape and caused the formation of Montenuovo.

In true Petrarchan style, the poet imagines himself wandering round the post-eruption landscape, contrasting his own sorrows with the desolation that he sees around him. The guitar represents the landscape, presenting a 27 bar grid in five defective versions. The saxophone represents the poet. Its music divides the grid into five subsection, each of which makes a different journey through nine different variative types.

I composed "vo piangendo io tra voi" between May and July 2021 for the Duo Galeano/Javaid, with funds made available by Artists Scholarship North Rhine-Westphalia. The Duo gave the work’s first performance at Kraftwerk, Chemnitz on 19th October 2021.

This recording is of a performance given at LOFT, Cologne by the Duo Galeano/Javaid on March 7th 2023.

vo piangendo io tra voi

British composer James Erber was born in 1951 in London of an Austrian father and an English mother. After studying Music at the Universities of Sussex (BA, 1973) and Nottingham (MA, 1975), he was appointed Music Editor at Peters Edition, London. He left Peters Edition in 1979 and began work as a freelance editor, writer and translator.  Still largely self-taught as a composer, it was at this period he produced his first acknowledged score, "Seguente" for oboe and piano (1976-1978, revised 1980). The guidance and encouragement he received from Brian Ferneyhough (whom he had met at Peters Edition) prompted him to a serious study of composition, firstly with Jonathan Harvey at the University of Sussex (MPhil in Composition, 1983), then from 1981 to 1982 with Ferneyhough himself at the Musikhochschule, Freiburg-im-Breisgau. In 1984, at Ferneyhough’s suggestion, he made the first of five visits to the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, winning a Stipendienpreis in 1988. From 1982 to 2016, he combined activity as a composer with teaching and lecturing. Since 2016 he has been able to concentrate solely on composition. 
James Erber's work reflects a wide range of interests, including Renaissance and Baroque music, the music of South-East Asia, Jazz, blues, Mediaeval and Renaissance philosophy, Kabbalah, green politics, recent scientific developments, film noir, Jacobean tragedy, the Gothic novel and historical slang.  His music is multi-layered and complex (especially from the point of view of rhythm and form). Its complexity is, however, combined with harmonic clarity and lyricism as well as a tenuous sense of optimism and a concern with intellectual and spiritual continuity.
It has been performed and broadcast widely by soloists such as Pavlos Antoniadis, Antonella Bini, Mario Caroli, Diego Castro Magaš, Matteo Cesari, Franklin Cox, Gianpaolo Antongirolami, Gleb Kanasevich, Carin Levine, Ian Pace, Jonathan Powell, Nancy Ruffer and Michele Selva, as well as by ensembles including 175 East, the Arditti Quartet, Duo Galeano/Javaid, Exposé, ELISION, Lontano and NOISE. James Erber’s music has been recorded on NMC, Metier, Centaur Records (USA) and Convivium Records. Many of his scores are available from Composers Edition. In July 2022, his complete writings on music (1978-2021) were published by Vision Edition under the title "Fragile Continuities".