Declining Light/Verfallenes Licht

[audio:verfallen.mp3]

red faces devoured by the night

shattered laughs in the vine

and glowing melancholy

spirit torture! a stone falls silent

blue voice of an angel in the sleeper’s ear

declining light

declining light

This an abridged translation of a poem without title from Georg Trakl, an Austrian poet of the Expressionism Era. At a certain point in working with the music of this tune, the need for some spoken lyrics appeared, and by intuition I took out this book of poems. In my younger days I would read Georg Trakl every year in the season of fall, but this time it was neither fall nor did I feel the need for some more melancholic or dark and dreary feelings. This time the overall surreal atmosphere of the music required such a poem…

The instrumentation is different in this tune, with the first obvious appearance of  violin along with mandolin, xylophone and dark vocals without words. Then suddenly you know something will happen, and there is this spoken poem above, embedded in shivering sounds to make your blood run cold. Strangely enough, the meter is 4/4 this time!

Forlorn In Folklore/Vollkommen Folkloren

[audio:folkloren.mp3]

Somehow this sounds like a fiddle tune minus a fiddle. It’s my Les Paul Special. Added jaw harp, triangle and some more guitars contribute to a funny feeling of exuberance, growing towards the end. A sudden break lets you fall into a repetition loop, and then fade out.

Although less than perfect, I like this tune in particular for its ending, where we are getting lost.

Do we still reside on top of a mountain? Have we found the way down in daylight?