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Die singende Muschel - (2009)
Francisca Stoecklin
for medium voice and piano
Als Kind sang eine Muschel
mir das Meer.
Ich konnte träumelang
an ihrem kühlen Munde lauschen.
Und meine Sehnsucht wuchs
und blühte schwer,
und stellte Wünsche und Gestalten
in das ferne Rauschen.[ 3 pages, circa 2' 05" ]
Francisca Stoecklin
As a child a mussel
in the sea sang to me.
I could listen dreaming long
to that cool mouth.
And my yearning grows
and becomes heavy,
and conjures wants and shapes
in the distant rustling.
In that clarified distance of memory, sounds return with a wistfulness, suggests the poet. Is it for a return to an age of innocence when imagination speaks truth in fantasies? Is it to conjure from those yearnings something new or something old yet lost in the now? The voice speaks first in a lengthy introduction, the Klang being at first the tonic major over the mediant major in a non-tonal polytonality. After a broad tonal gesture which follows, the insistence of the opening Klang is heard again in transposition to the polytonal mediant before a return to the tonic.
The text is enunciated over the chord form which predominates, a simple statement in the more mundane tonic answered again by the more complex reminiscence in as in the opening gesture. The second phrase elongates beyond and more broadly than the first in its own kind of insistence to hear and attend to the "rustling."
The score for Die singende Muschel is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.
