× Upcoming Events Past Events
Home
Dirait-on (from Les chansons des roses, #5)
Morten Lauridsen, Text: Rainer Maria Rilke

Morten Lauridsen is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and served as composer-in-residence from 1994 to 2001 for the Los Angeles Masterworks Chorale, but he seems to do much of his musical thinking and planning on a remote island in the San Juan archipelago in the Puget Sound, north and west of Seattle (Listen for the soft lapping of waves on a pebble beach.)

“Dirait-on” is the final movement from his choral cycle, Les Chansons des Roses, based on poetry by Rainer Marie Rilke (1875-1926). who wrote a vast number of poems in French and in German. Lauridsen describes his selection of Rilke’s poetry as follows: “These exquisite poems are primarily light, joyous and playful, and the musical settings are designed to enhance....and capture their delicate beauty and sensuousness.” 

Abandon entouré d'abandon,
tendresse touchant aux tendresses...
C'est ton intérieur qui sans cesse
se caresse, 
dirait-on;
Wildness surrounding wildness,
Tenderness touching tenderness,
It is your own core that you ceaselessly
caress.... 
as they say.
se caresse en soi-même,
par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème
du Narcisse exhaucé.
It is your own center that you caress,
Your own reflection gives you light.
And in this way, you show us
how Narcissus is redeemed.

 

Dirait-on (from Les chansons des roses, #5)
Morten Lauridsen, Text: Rainer Maria Rilke

Morten Lauridsen is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and served as composer-in-residence from 1994 to 2001 for the Los Angeles Masterworks Chorale, but he seems to do much of his musical thinking and planning on a remote island in the San Juan archipelago in the Puget Sound, north and west of Seattle (Listen for the soft lapping of waves on a pebble beach.)

“Dirait-on” is the final movement from his choral cycle, Les Chansons des Roses, based on poetry by Rainer Marie Rilke (1875-1926). who wrote a vast number of poems in French and in German. Lauridsen describes his selection of Rilke’s poetry as follows: “These exquisite poems are primarily light, joyous and playful, and the musical settings are designed to enhance....and capture their delicate beauty and sensuousness.” 

Abandon entouré d'abandon,
tendresse touchant aux tendresses...
C'est ton intérieur qui sans cesse
se caresse, 
dirait-on;
Wildness surrounding wildness,
Tenderness touching tenderness,
It is your own core that you ceaselessly
caress.... 
as they say.
se caresse en soi-même,
par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème
du Narcisse exhaucé.
It is your own center that you caress,
Your own reflection gives you light.
And in this way, you show us
how Narcissus is redeemed.