Trois Méditations

1. Le Vent
2. Belle Absence
3. Le Reflet du Feu

Soprano and piano (or piano and harp)

One of the many things I love about Rilke’s poetry is the impact the texts often have at their conclusions; the revelation or epiphany that his language meanders its way towards by the end. Each poem in this set has that sort of profound moment at its close and, musically, this is what I worked to capture.

The first poem deals with loneliness by way of a ghostly pair of children who are presumably lost and a weeping girl who has been abandoned by her lover. In these two situations, however, the speaker has the relative safety of an observer rather than a participant. What Rilke then does in the last stanza is put the reader right in the driver’s seat of the experience by suddenly shifting to the first person. All of the sudden we are lost in the forest or weeping over a long-lost love, and all we can do at this moment is listen to the wind—the only constant throughout the entire poem—and cry.

The second movement, “Belle Absence,” is a bit more straightforward; just a sparkly tune in the Lydian mode crafted into a set of variations that eventually fades away into the distance. The last stanza is the origin of the song’s title.

”Le Reflet du Feu” was the most difficult to set but, in the end, the simplest in terms of its music. The sound-picture I had in my mind was sitting around a campfire and having a conversation. No matter how loud or soft the discussion gets there would always be this constant underpinning of the crackle of the fire.

The compositional device that came to represent this is the constant back-and-forth of a triad in the instruments. The music ebbs and flows above it—or overflows, as in the case of the last four lines—until we arrive at the gorgeous final stanza of the poetry; a notion that, as musicians, we can certainly identify with.

Trois Méditations was commissioned by Christian Hardy and is dedicated with love and gratitude to his daughter, Jessica Hardy (for whom it was commissioned) with a special note of thanks to Stephen Swanson for tutoring me in French over coffee and pastries during the months I was writing it.

The Text

By Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
English translations by Stephen Swanson and the composer

1. Le vent
Je vois deux yeux comme deux enfants                                     
errant dans une forêt.                                                                     
Ils disent: qui nous mange c’est le vent, le vent—                 
et moi je réponds: je le sais.                                                          

Je connais une fille qui pleure, son amant                                
il-y-a deux ans s’en allait,                                                              
mais elle dit tout doucement: c’est le vent, le vent—           
et moi je réponds: je le sais.

Souvent dans ma chambre en m’éveillant                                
il me semble qu’une langue me parlait.                                    
Toi! Mais la nuit murmure: le vent—
et je pleure dans mon lit: je le sais.

1. The Wind
I see two eyes, like children
wandering in a forest.
They say, “What eats at us is the wind, the wind.”
And I reply, “I know.”

I know a girl who cries,
Her lover left her two years ago,
but she says, so sweetly, “It’s the wind, the wind.”
And I reply, “I know.”

Often, I wake up in my room
thinking I hear a voice speaking to me.
“You!” But the night murmurs, “The wind.”
And I cry in my bed, “I know.”

2. Bell absence
Ce ne sont pas des souvenirs
qui, en moi, t’entretiennent;
tu n’es pas non plus mienne
par la force d’un beau désir.

Ce qui te rend présente,
c’est le détour ardent      
qu’une tendresse lente
décrit dans mon propre sang.

Je suis sans besoin
de te voir apparaître;
il m’a suffi de naître
pour te perdre un peu moins.

2. Beautiful Absence
You don’t survive in me
because of memories.
You are not mine because of
the strength of a beautiful longing.

What does make you present
is the passionate detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.

I do not need
to see you appear;
being born was enough for me
to lose you a little less.

3. Le Reflet du Feu
Peut-être n’était-ce qu’un reflet du feu      
sur quelque meuble luisant
que beaucoup plus tarde l’enfant
se rappelle comme un aveu

Et si dans sa vie de plus tard         
un jour, comme tant d’autres, le blesse,
c’est qu’il a pris comme promesse
un quelconque hasard.   

N’oublions non plus la musique   
qui tôt l’avait entraîné    
vers l’absence que complique
une âme comblée….

3. Reflection of Fire
Maybe this was only a reflection of fire
on a shining piece of furniture
That the child recalls so much later
like a vow.

As if, in his later life, a single day
wounds him like so many others,
It’s because he mistook a promise
for an ordinary chance.

Let’s not forget music, either,
Which had soon carried him along
toward the absence complicated
by an overflowing heart…

Performed by Page Stephens (soprano) and Charlie Magnone (piano).