Login

Enter your username and password

Forgotten your username or password?

Your Shopping Cart

There are no items in your shopping cart.

Work

2 Rilke Lieder : for soprano, viola/viola d'amore and clarinet

by Jack Symonds (2014)

Work Overview

Rilke's Die Engel and Lòˆsch mir die Augen aus are two poems which display his visionary conception of the spiritual and of love. In Die Engel, the five movements of the composition cut across Rilke's text overlaying a new structure on his mystical evocation of a terrifying angel. The 'Alpha-and-Omega' quality of this figure is here represented by palindromes both exact and inexact. The outer movements are exact palindromes, the second and fourth fast movements and gestural palindromic variations, and the central slow movement contains palindromic interval shapes.

In contrast, Liebeslied fanatically dissects Rilke's extraordinary nine-line evocation of a love so powerful it can transcend the body into a nine-part form made of collections of genre pieces, each colouring a single line. First come a series of four variations on a chord, widening the expressive extreme until almost breaking. Next is a pair of Hommages - the first is to Salvatore Sciarrino, where the 'breaking' is here achieved with his characteristic splintered quietude. Next is a genuflection to Hans Werner Henze - describing hands and hearts -, which strings together tiny splinters from some of his most euphoric passages. Finally, three quick canons all run together, contorting themselves in increasingly complex contrapuntal formations until a canon at the unison ties an open-ended knot.

Work Details

Year: 2014

Instrumentation: Soprano, viola/viola d'amore, clarinet.

Duration: 8 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Contents note: Die Engel -- Liebeslied.

Commission note: Commissioned by Jane Sheldon.

First performance: by Jane Sheldon, James Wannan, Jason Noble — 18 Jul 14. Symbiosis I, 107 Projects, Redfern, Sydney

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc associated with this work:
German poetry

Performances of this work

18 Jul 14: Symbiosis I, 107 Projects, Redfern, Sydney. Featuring Jane Sheldon, James Wannan, Jason Noble.

User reviews

Be the first to share your thoughts, opinions and insights about this work.

To post a comment please login.