On Monday I had the pleasure of hearing Wolgang Rihm’s epic cantata for choir and orchestra Quid Est Deus (What is God?) performed in Salzburg’s beautiful Kollegienkirche.
It consists of twenty four answers to the question What is God?, taken from a Latin text from the Apocrypha, ascribed to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus. The programme to the Kontinent Rihm concert series, of which this was a part, provided the original Latin alongside a modern German translation.
Following the concert I, along with several other Roche Continents participents, discussed that, rather than plucking a translation straight from the internet, it might be nice to have a stab at remembering some of our schoolboy Latin and have a go at translating from scratch. Please do contribute and help reveal the answers to this most enigmatic of all questions.
