3:15. SATB a cappella.
About
First performance: 19. February 2023. Stadtcasino Basel. Eric Whitacre with the Männerstimmen Basel. (Version for TTBB)
Awards: 1st Prize ISCM International New Choral Music Composition Contest 2021
Rainer Maria Rilke’s lyric poetry has always fascinated me. Rilke’s texts are actually already music; they are a figure that one still has to simply chisel out of the metaphorical stone. On the one hand, this choral composition is a reflection on nature and the transience of life; on the other hand, it also portrays how one can joyfully relish the beauty of life. In the 2021 ISCM Composition Competition for equal voices the men’s choir version of this piece won first prize. In February 2023 it was successfully premiered by the Male Voices Basel under the direction of Eric Whitacre.
There is also a TTBB version available.
Watch (TTBB Version)
Männerstimmen Basel, Eric Whitacre (conductor)Preview Score
Text
Roses
Été: être pour quelques jours
le contemporain des roses;
respirer ce qui flotte autour
de leurs âmes écloses.
Faire de chacune qui se meurt
une confidente,
et survivre à cette sœur
en d’autres roses absente.
Roses
Summer: live a few days
in the high time of the roses,
breathe all that may drift away
their souls, sunlit.
Each one that passes away, may be
my own,
And that other roses
Give it a new bloom.
