listen (mp3)

Everybody's Going There for recorder quartet

2007, 15 minutes

Commissioned by QNG-Quartet New Generation

Everybody's Going There wasn't so much inspired by "The Future," by Rainer Maria Rilke, as that the poem expresses in words what I was thinking about while writing the music.

The Future

by Rainer Maria Rilke

L'avenir: cette excuse du temps
de nous faire peur;
projet trop vaste, morceau trop grand
pour la bouche du cœur.

Qui t'aura jamais attendu, avenir?
Tout le monde s'en va.
Il te suffit d'approfondir
l'absence que l'on a.

The future, time's excuse
to scare us –
too vast a project, too large a morsel
for the heart to chew on

Who would ever wait for you, future?
Everybody's leaving.*
It's enough that you intensify
our emptiness.

*I initially encountered this poem in English translation, with this line somewhat oddly translated as "Everyone is going there," a gloss upon which is the piece's title.

The excerpts above are performed by QNG-Quartet New Generation.

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