Description

Voicing: Baritone, Violin

Level: 3

Duration: approx. 3 minutes

To see perusal score, please contact Jocelyn.

The translation of this poem was chosen by my husband and me in 2006, to be read at our wedding. Setting it to music was a happy and surprising endeavor. I had no idea it would be a dance!

Text

by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), translator unknown

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul?
How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects,
in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate
when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,

takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.