This is the 1st movement of a larger piece for my electronic, hand-played, e-percussion orchestra. The text of the poem is below, in English, together with the German original.

RILKE & MUSIC? I should say here, that I very much dislike hearing the amazingly sonorous, resonant verse of Rilke set to music. [I get requests all the time for my English translations, and I always, in a hopefully gentle way, try to discourage people.] This is because the music is already very powerfully THERE, in the music of the poem itself. So the original natural music of the poem is what is lost once the music is added. With this soundpoem cycle, however, I'm trying something else. I do the poems as I hear them as a poem, not as song, and then, I've composed a space--a kind of landscape, really--around them. This seems to complement the movement of meaning of the poems that leaves the spirit of the urtext intact.

Title Page 

It's easy for the rich and fortunate to be silent, 
nobody wants to know who they are. 
That is why the destitute must show themselves, 
must say: I am blind, 
or: that is what I'm about to become, 
or: it's not going very well with me here on Earth, 
or: I have a sick child, 
or: this is where I'm kind of all stuck together . . . 

And perhaps even that is not enough. 

Despite everything, as if they were things, 
people walk right by, and so they must sing. 

And one hears good music there. 

Truly, people are strange; They'd 
rather hear castrati in boys' choirs. 

But God himself comes and remains a long time 
when these disfigured ones begin to disturb him.

Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. CLIFF CREGO)

Titelblatt

Die Reichen und Glücklichen haben gut schweigen,
niemand will wissen, was sie sind.
Aber die Dürftigen müßen sich zeigen,
müßen sagen: ich bin blind,
oder: ich bin im Begriff es zu werden
oder: es geht mir nicht gut auf Erden,
oder: ich habe ein krankes Kind,
oder: da bin ich zusammengefügt . . .

Und vielleicht, daß das gar nicht genügt.

Und weil alle sonst, wie an Dingen,
an ihen vorbeigehen, müßen sie singen.

Und da hört man noch guten Gesang.

Freilich die Menchen sind seltsam; sie hören
lieber Kastraten in Knabenchören.

Aber Gott selber kommt und bleibt lang,
wenn ihn diese Beschnittenen stören.

DOWNLOAD: #FreeFriday RILKE IN THE WALLOWAS 80 new tr. & 120 photos, by CLIFF CREGO pdf 212 p/ 208 Mb http://bit.ly/mA3Ly7


from THE VOICES: "Title Page" (after RILKE)

Jaehyuck Choi (1994) - Signal (2022)
for soprano saxophone and trombone (2022)

Live at Concours Nicati 2023
26.08.2023

Duo Signal 
Alejandro Oliván - soprano saxophone
Adrián Albaladejo Díaz - trombone

https://www.duosignal.net/

Audio recording: Christophe Egea
Audio mix and mastering: Clément Marie

Salquin Konzertsaal, Hochschule Luzern-Musik

Jaehyuck Choi - Signal (2022) - live, Luzern - 26.08.2023

Special thanks to my good friend, Simone de HAAN, Australian new music trombonist extraordinaire…I couldn’t have done this project without his help.

“What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.”

TEXT of Bertrand Russell’s Last letter used here is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/russells-last-letter.pdf

Feel free to make your own, I am sure, much better performance of the text. The track for the orchestral background (minus voice) is here:  http://picture-poems.com/mp3/russell_no-voice.wav

IMAGE: Bertrand RUSSELL, 1957

RUSSELL’S 1970 LAST LETTER, a call for peace in the Middle East

PHOTO: YUM CHENMO--"Great Wisdom Mother" at EWAM, Garden of 1000 Buddhas, Jocko Valley, Arlee, Montana

SEE TEXT at: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/1000-buddhas_9-29-10_8bw.html

RETWEET #buddhism A QUESTION OF #NONVIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE—a meditation pdf [140k] http://bit.ly/1nkSlvg mp3 [3.7Mb] http://bit.ly/1nkSjDB

A QUESTION OF NON-VIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE,  a meditation . . .

PHOTO: Arinica (Arnica montana) & Butterfly, the Alps

POSTER is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.html

POSTER pdf is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.pdf

DOWNLOAD: #FreeFriday RILKE IN THE WALLOWAS 80 new tr. & 120 photos, by CLIFF CREGO pdf 212 p/ 208 Mb http://bit.ly/mA3Ly7

RILKE: Sonnets to Orpheus, XIV [second part], German/English, tr. Cliff Crego

A 17 seventeen-step poem is a kind of generalized HAIKU. How it is notated in the score isn’t relevant. Only the 17 steps as we hear/sense/feel them as a dance, a pattern of movement, is important.

A SEQUENCE strings 17 of these seventeen-step poems together, like strings of lights on a Christmas tree. Each string has a different color or theme or center.

There are 17 SEQUENCES. Here, we hear the first nine.

Each numbered pattern we hear is a single image or experience from a bike packing pilgrimage made through the mountains of IDAHO and OREGON. 120 days / 80 camps. Many more, new special places and new friends.

TEXT of SEQUENCES I through XI… (rough draft…) is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/lost-in-idaho.pdf

IMAGE: My bike packing rig, MISSOULA. I cache the bike, and periodically change over to boots and backpack for wilderness photography work, and then hike back out to my bike.

LOST IN IDAHO, A pilgrim’s notebook….Sequences I through IX

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3XXq8_01w

The immediate inspiration for my 'Fragment 16 (Xenogothic Triple Canon)' was a piece by the composer Matt Barber (https://soundcloud.com/brbrofsvl ) titled 'Prelude and Canon for Wind Quintet' ( which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhKDdcFm8l0 ). The title belies his piece's compositional virtuosity: the canon is in five different superimposed speeds, and uses late romantic tonal language. It caused quite a stir at Eastman when it was first played there, despite its short length. Matt's musicianship has been inspirational to me since I was 18 years old, and in some ways I feel like I am always several steps behind him. So I also wanted to write a polytempic canon in a historical contrapuntal style, and Avignon around 1370 was my target.

I failed, quickly: my piece is not strictly in three different consistent speeds (much too difficult), but the melodies in each voice, otherwise all direct copies of one another, do get pervasively pushed and pulled like taffy into and out of shifting speeds. I partly attribute my failure to my beloved teacher, Jean-François Charles, who suggested “Why not write a canon at the [melodic distance of a] 7th? ”, suggesting that canons at the 5th and octave were rather passé. I took him up on this, but it made life harder. For example, for technical reasons, descending scales were now basically off limits, and descending sixths become sort-of necessary as an escape hatch, both features which were uncommon in the melodic style of the medieval period. Nevertheless, it was great fun getting the piece to sound as 'medieval' as possible given these constraints. I can't take credit for the coinage 'Xenogothic'; that honor belongs to microtonal theorist and composer Margo Schulter (https://www.bestii.com/~mschulter/QuickTour.html). Please look up her and Matt's music if you get the chance.

Thanks to the JACK Quartet  for this wonderful performance.

Fragment 16 (Xenogothic Triple Canon)

In the silence of the night, the bubo bubo releases its voice into the valley with all its majesty; its depth rivals that of the night itself.

recorded at midnight in Niğde Aladağlar, April 30, 2025

Bubo Bubo (Eagle Owl) Aladaglar, Emli Vadisi

Pied Butcherbird song at dawn, accompanied by White-winged Fairywren, Trillers, Miners, Emu booms,  Magpies et al, in the NSW outback near Lightning Ridge

Pied Butcherbird Sunrise Recital

Water loss on land adds to rising seas: global drying with gravity satellite expert Jay Famiglietti.  Is this planet actually a living cooperative? Explore with science journalist Ferris Jabr. Expect abrupt shifts in big systems, from ocean currents to ice - new science led by Sjoerd Terpstra.  Three interviews.

Global drying, Gaia & Abrupt Change

σαν της αυγής ονείρατα και σκιάχτρα σαν της νύχτας (like dreams of the dawn and scarecrows of the night) • for soprano, accordion & marimba • a sound illustration on poetry by Kostis Palamas • composed by Christos Farmakis in 2020

0:00 Σιωπή | Silence
2:25 Μάγισσες αρμέγουν το φεγγάρι | Witches milking the moon
5:24 Βροχή από αίμα | Rain of blood

performed by KIMI ensemble • https://www.kimi-ensemble.com/
Þórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir • soprano
Katerina Anagnostidou • marimba
Jónas Ásgeirsson • accordion

http://christosfarmakis.com/

like dreams of the dawn and scarecrows of the night

Composer. Writer. Photographer. Former conductor & founder of the ASKO ensemble.

On a bike/ski/hike trek of the Pacific Northwest studying native plants & climate breakdown 🌲 from sagebrush sea to whitebark pine. Composing off-grid the whole way.

#Sun2Sound 🌕 on Bluesky

THINKING LIKE A STONEPINE, a soundpoem manifesto https://vimeo.com/844665859

“LOVE & WATER, three thought poems w/ coda, PHAROS for small orchestra, “Nightwind”” https://vimeo.com/847079690 

CURRENTLY on mt bike/ski/climbing trek through Pacific Northwest, working on a photobook about WHITEBARK PINE COLLAPSE and CLIMATE CRISIS. BASES in the WALLOWAS | AMSTERDAM | ALPS. 

WEEKLY photo/poetry updates at www.picture-poems.com & THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE new music, poetry & dance performance project at www.cs-music.com

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT for progressive, tech-savy, instrumental virtuosi interested in dialogue & collaborative undertakings.

CONTACT cliff@picture-opoems.com
Or on SKYPE or FACETIME @cliffcrego

MUSIC? The one thing humans do,
that makes the rest of nature jealous.

from THE VOICES: "Title Page" (after RILKE)

Cliff Crego

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