…of the rolling worlds (1999)

Details

  • 12
  • Bass Clarinet and Tape

Score Excerpts

Sound Samples

Program Notes

The title of this piece comes from a poem by the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938).

SIERRA
An invisible hand
silently caresses
the sad pulp
of the rolling worlds.
Someone, I don’t know who,
has steeped my heart
in sweetness.
In the August snow
the blossom of the peach tree —
early flowering —
opens to the sun.
Stretched out on the sierra’s
ochre ridge,
a frozen
woman of granite;
the wind howls
the grief of her lonely bosom.
Butterflies
of moon
sip
her frozen
breasts
by night.
An on my eyelids,
a tear swells
older than my body.

(translated from the Spanish by Rachel Benson)

This work was commissioned by Harry Sparnaay, and is respectfully dedicated to him.