La courbe de tes yeux
Paul Eluard (1895 – 1952)
The italicised lines are only used in the setting
The curve of your eyes goes around my heart,
A round of dance and sweetness,
Halo of time, nocturnal and safe cradle,
And if I don’t know any more all that I’ve lived through
It’s because I haven’t always been seen by you.
Leaves of day and scum of dew,
Reeds of the wind, perfumed smiles,
Wings covering the world with light,
Ships filled with the sky and the sea,
Hunters of noises and sources of colours,
Perfumes bloomed from a brood of dawns
That always lies on the straw of the stars,
As the day depends on innocence
The whole world depends on your pure eyes
And all my blood flows in their looks.
Unending love
Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
Year 2013,
Duration 6:09 min
For female and male vocal soloists, SATB choir, string quartet, harp, and piano.
This work uses three texts: Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore; La courbe by Paul Eluard; and O Ecclesia by Hildegard.
It is a reworking of a much earlier setting from 1992 of these texts.
The work combines the fragility of a single note, sung or played, with sudden surges of textures in counterpoint. Informed by the use of multiple texts and layers found in 13th century isorhythmic motets, each exposed part adds to its sense of intimacy.
Unending Love… can be performed with its companion piece: Remember.
A vocal score for voices and piano is also available.
O Ecclesia (a fragment)
Hildegarde von Bingen
(1098-1179)
The italicised lines are only used in the setting
In multo desiderio
desideravi ad te venire
et in celestibus nuptiis tecum sedere,
per alienam viam ad te currens
velut nubes que in purissimo aere
currit similis saphiro
With the greatest desire
I have longed to come unto you
and cleave to you in heavenly marriage,
hastening to you on this unknown path,
like clouds that in the purest air
appear to fly in sapphire