Photograph by Scott Ordway (California, January 2021)

Prelude, In the Wide Spaces of the Day (2017)

Cello and piano / 7 minutes

PREMIERE

Commissioned by WordSong

Premiere: November 2018 at Orangerie im Günthersburkpark, Frankfurt am Main
Claude Frochaux, cello; Anna Naretto, piano

MEDIA

Perusal Score

Purchase Score

NOTE

This short work for cello and piano was inspired by the penultimate line of Hermann Hesse’s 1953 poem “Night.”

Wohl lieb ich die finstre Nacht;
Oft aber, wenn sie also bleich
Und düster wie aus Schmerzen lacht,
Graut mir vor ihrem argen Reich
Und ich sehne mich, die Sonne zu schauen
Und lichterfüllte Wolken im Blauen,
Um warm in glänzenden Tagesräumen
Von der Nacht zu träumen.

(Hermann Hesse, 1953)

I like the dark night well enough;
But sometimes, when it turns bleak
And peaked, as my suffering laughs at me,
Its dreadful kingdom horrifies me,
And I wish to God I could take one look at the sunlight
And the blue of heaven brought back to light by its clouds,
And I want to lie down warm in the wide spaces of the day.
Then I can dream of the night.