and Klimt! Verklaerte Nacht! Add an alto declaiming the poems?

Wonderful sound paintings of these three poems!

This is terrific. Highly inventive, dramatic, and very often downright beautiful.

This may be my favorite of your pieces.  Neoromantic in the best sense....with an emphasis on the NEO!

Remarkably brings together so many of your influences while remaining - you!

Three Romances for Orchestra
Composed between July-October 2023.

1. I lie here thinking of you [0:00]
2. I see a wild civility [4:59]
3.  When I die, I want your hands on my eyes [11:11]

Composed as a sequel to my Three Instances for Orchestra, the difference between these pieces and its predecessor is exactly in the title (despite the formal similarities: a moderately paced first movement, a fast second movement and a slow third). The Instances are more abstract in their content, besides being composed for a smaller orchestra. The Romances are more explicitly "amoureux", love-struck. 

I preface each movement with a line from a love poem. The first movement, based on "Love Song" by William Carlos Williams, is a yearning address from one lover to another separated by a great distance. The second, from "Delight in Disorder" by Robert Herrick, highlights the beauty of imperfection. The third movement, inspired by Pablo Neruda, brings the cycle to a full circle with death and acceptance.

Love Song – William Carlos Williams
I lie here thinking of you:—
 
the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branches that lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world—
 
you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!


Delight in Disorder – Robert Herrick 

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.


When I die, I want your hands on my eyes – Pablo Neruda 

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.

So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

Comments

dieterammann4

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