On March 16, 1485, the poet Sebastian Brant witnessed a solar eclipse in Basel. He recorded his experience in the Latin style customary at the time in a cycle of poems entitled “Eklipsis.”
On August 11, 1999, my wife and I had the unique opportunity to witness a solar eclipse on Monte Tamaro in Ticino. Twenty years later, I was commissioned by the Männerstimmen Basel to set “O Phaeton, Phaeton” – the central poem from Sebastian Brant's Eklipsis cycle – to music. In it, I describe in minute detail the events of 1999 on Monte Tamaro: bright sunshine, birds fluttering wildly, grazing sheep, and happy people. Then it grew cooler, darker, and quieter. The fluttering and chirping of the birds disappeared, the sheep lay down, and complete silence and darkness descended. After a while, it became lighter and warmer again: the first rays of sunshine appeared, the sheep rose and began to graze again, the chirping and fluttering of the birds returned – the clear, bright sun now shone even more intensely and joyfully.
Carl Rütti
