Much to Rainer Maria Rilke's dismay, his 1899 extended prose poem "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" was a magnet for composers, and the author is on record as having only contempt for musical settings of his work. Nonetheless, composers have continued to overlook Rilke's wishes, creating pieces based on the writing as diverse as Henri Sauguet's song cycle, Viktor Ullmann's orchestral work with speaker, and Siegfried Matthus' opera. The setting that has most firmly established itself is Frank Martin's ...
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Much to Rainer Maria Rilke's dismay, his 1899 extended prose poem "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" was a magnet for composers, and the author is on record as having only contempt for musical settings of his work. Nonetheless, composers have continued to overlook Rilke's wishes, creating pieces based on the writing as diverse as Henri Sauguet's song cycle, Viktor Ullmann's orchestral work with speaker, and Siegfried Matthus' opera. The setting that has most firmly established itself is Frank Martin's 1943 hour-long cycle for contralto and orchestra, a work that affirms Martin's status as an unjustly neglected master of the mid-twentieth century. Martin's music doesn't have a flashy surface, and he lacks the uniquely recognizable voice of someone like Hindemith or Poulenc or Copland, but the psychological insights he brings to his music, particularly to his narrative works, have a profound integrity and a stunning dramatic impact. An example is the penultimate song in "Die...
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