You Us & Them
(2011)Program note
In the Maeterlinck year 2011, FIlip Rathé of the Spectra Ensemble asked me to write a companion piece for Les trois soeurs aveugles.
In Maeterlinck's poem, three blind sisters climb a tower, with their lamps of hope (‘espérons encore’) – a light died out at the end of the song. ‘Elles, vous et nous’ is a stanza that keeps returning in the poem.
But who are ‘they and we’? I imagined them all walking in the tower, the sisters and the musicians of Spectra Ensemble. Climbing the same stone steps, everyone of them clattered up in their own tempo – interrupted increasingly by the wavering light.
In Maeterlinck's poem, three blind sisters climb a tower, with their lamps of hope (‘espérons encore’) – a light died out at the end of the song. ‘Elles, vous et nous’ is a stanza that keeps returning in the poem.
But who are ‘they and we’? I imagined them all walking in the tower, the sisters and the musicians of Spectra Ensemble. Climbing the same stone steps, everyone of them clattered up in their own tempo – interrupted increasingly by the wavering light.
Scoring
Piccolo
Clarinet
Glockenspiel
Piano
Violin
Viola
Violoncello
Clarinet
Glockenspiel
Piano
Violin
Viola
Violoncello
Duration
4'
More info
Commissioned by SPECTRA Ensemble, with support of the city of Ghent (for the celebration of Maeterlinck100).
First performance
Premiered by SPECTRA Ensemble, November 8, 2011, in the Auditorium of the Fundación Carlos de Amberes, Madrid.
Sheet music
Available for rent/purchase from Deuss Music.