• Rolf Wallin
  • Drei Gedichte von Rainer Maria Rilke (1994)

  • Chester Music Ltd (World)

Commissioned by the Norwegian Broadcasting Company

Version also available for medium voice and piano

  • high voice/pf
  • 11 min
  • Rilke
  • German

Programme Note

These three poems were written between 1900 and 1908, and they are very different in terms of form, subject matter, and atmosphere. Liebes-Lied is about a strong but painful love, Buddha in der Glorie, a description of religious ecstasy, quite unusual in the works of Rilke, and Sluss-stück, about death, which exists in the midst of us, in the middle of life.

The work with the songs was a part of a process that occupied me a lot for a period. Is it possible to approach the melodic element in a new way, after many years of letting it live in the shadows of other musical elements, such as rhythm, timbre and form? This is a possible solution.

Discography