Just After Sunset

Song Cycle

2. Autumn  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: German (Deutsch) 
The leaves are falling, falling as from far,
as though above were withering farthest gardens;
they fall with a denying attitude.

And night by night, down into solitude,
the heavy earth falls far from every star.

We are all falling. This hand’s falling too–
all have this falling-sickness none withstands.

And yet there’s One whose gently-holding hands
this universal falling can’t fall through.

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960) and by Martyn Roy Bates (b. 1957), published 1998 [ voices and band ]

See other settings of this text.

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilke, Possibility of Being; A Selection of Poems, New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1977, p.11


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

3. From the Book of Pilgrimage

Language: English 
Put out my eyes, I still can see you so
 . . . . . . . . . .

— The rest of this text is not
currently in the database but will be
added as soon as we obtain it. —

Text Authorship:

  • by Anonymous / Unidentified Author

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voices and band ]

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4. Song of the Sea  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Primeval breath from sea, 
sea- wind by night : 
from every errand free; 
one lying till light 
must seek and find what he 
may interpose: 
primeval breath from sea, 
that only blows 
as for primeval stone, 
pure space 
rushing from realms unknown. 

How felt by a high-sown 
fig-tree that clings for place 
in the moonlight alone.

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voices and band ]

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Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilken, Requiem and other poems, London :The Hogarth Press, 1949, p.120


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

5. To Music  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
stillness of pictures. You speech, where speeches
end. You time
vertically poised on the courses of 
vanishing hearts.

Feelings for what? O, you transformation
of feelings into...audible landscape!
You stranger: Music. Space that's outgrown us,
heartspace. Innermost us, transcendently
surging away from us
holiest parting,
where what is within surrounds us
as practiced horizon, as other
side of the air,
pure,
gigantic,
no longer lived in.

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voices and band ]

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Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

6. Going blind  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
She’d sat just like the others there at tea.
And then I’d seemed to notice that her cup
was being a little differently picked up.
She’d smiled once. It had almost hurt to see.

And when eventually they rose and talked,
and slowly, and as chance led, were dispersing
through several rooms there, laughing and conversing,
I noticed her. Behind the rest she walked

subduedly, like someone who presently
will have to sing, and with so many listening;
on those bright eyes of hers, with pleasure glistening,
played, as on pools, an outer radiancy.

She followed slowly and she needed time,
as though some long ascent were not yet by;
and yet, as though, when she had ceased to climb,
she would no longer merely walk, but fly.

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voices and band ]

Go to the general single-text view

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilke, Possibility of Being; A Selection of Poems, New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1977, p.38


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

8.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Again and again, though we know the landscape of love
 [ ... ]

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voice and band ]

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This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.

Confirmed with Michael Hamburger, An unofficial Rilke : poems 1912-1926, London : Anvil Press Poetry, 1981, p.59


9. The Panter  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
     In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

His gaze those bars keep passing is so misted
with tiredness, it can take in nothing more.
He feels as though a thousand bars existed,
and no more world beyond them before.

Those supply-powerful paddings, turning there
in the tiniest of circles, well might be
the dance of forces round a center where
some mighty will stands paralyticly.

Just now and then the pupil's noiseless shutter
is lifted.— Then an image will indart,
down through the limbs' intensive stillness flutter,
and end its being in the heart.

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voices and band ]

Go to the general single-text view

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

10. From The Book Of Monastic Life  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
I'm trickling away, I'm trickling away
Like sand running though fingers
I have so many desires at once

And each one is thirsty in a different way
I can feel myself swelling and hurting
In a hundred races
But most of all in the middle of my heart

I want to die. Leave me alone ! 
I think I shall manage 
to get so scared 
my pulses will burst.

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voices and band ]

Go to the general single-text view

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours, Edwin Mellen Press Limited, 1995


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

12. Early spring
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Harshness gone. And sudden mitigation
Laid upon the field's uncovered grey
Little runnels change their intonation
Tentative caresses stray

Round the still earth from immensity
Roads run far into the land, foretelling
Unexpectedly you find it, welling
Upwards in the empty tree

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voice and band ]

Go to the general single-text view

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

15. Autumn Day
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Lord, it is time. The summer was so great
Impose upon the sundials now your shadows
And around the meadows let the winds rotate

Commands the last fruits to incarnadine;
Vouchsafe, to urge them on into completeness
Yet two more south-like days; and that last sweetness
Inveigle it into the heavy vine

He'll not build now, who has no house awaiting
Who's now alone, for long will so remain:
Sit late, read, write long letters, and again
Return to restlessly perambulating
The avеnues of parks when leavеs downrain

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voice and band ]

Go to the general single-text view

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilke , Possibility of Being: A Selection of Poems, New Directions, 1977, p.11


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

16. The Departure of the Prodigal Son
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
At last to leave behind all that confusion: 
the things of ours that never quite belonged 
although, like water in a well, they served
to reflect ourselves (it trembled: we were gone); 
to shed what still attempts to cling 
as if attached by thorns - and suddenly 
to see in close-up, every detail clear, 
people and things impossible to see 
(familiar and banal and always there) 
and find them tender and conciliatory; 
at last to comprehend old injuries 
and realise how disproportionate 
our childhood's overwhelming sense of hurt 
had been; in spite of all to leave, to tear 
our hands away as if to tear a scar 
already healed, and to depart: but where? 
Into uncertainty, looking to find 
some distant, unfamiliar, temperate land 
to be the setting that our actions need 
(the courtyard, or the garden, as required); 
to take our leave: but why? Because we're driven; 
because of what we are, our dispositions; 
because of urgent premonitions; 
because of darkness and our lack of vision: 

To make this whole attempt; perhaps in vain 
of what we hold; perhaps to die 
uncomprehendingly, perhaps alone 
How else can we discover a new life?

Text Authorship:

Based on:

Set by Anne Charlotte Clarke (b. 1960), 1998 [ voice and band ]

Go to the general single-text view

Confirmed with Stephen Cohn, Rainer Maria Rilke. Neue Gedichte / New Poems, Northwestern University Press, 1998, p.41


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]
Total word count: 847