Movements and Poems
The composition is in five movements, each based on a poem by Mallarmé:
- "Don" - based on "Don du poème"
- "Improvisation I on Mallarmé" - based on the sonnet "Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui"
- "Improvisation II on Mallarmé" - based on the sonnet "Une dentelle s'abolit"
- "Improvisation III on Mallarmé" - based on the sonnet "A la nue accablante tu"
- "Tombeau" - based on the poem of the same name
The title is taken from another Mallarmé poem, "Remémoration d'amis belges", that is not used in the piece, in which the poet describes how a mist that covers the city of Bruges gradually disappears :
- Comme furtive d'elle et visible je sens
- Que se dévêt pli selon pli la pierre veuve
- ("As if by stealth and visible I sense
- That fold by fold the widowed stone unrobes itself")
"So, fold by fold, as the five movements develop, a portrait of Mallarmé is revealed," Boulez said.
Read more about this topic: Pli Selon Pli
Famous quotes containing the words movements and/or poems:
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“There’s a wonderful family called Stein:
There’s Gert and there’s Ep and there’s Ein.
Gert’s poems are bunk,
Ep’s statues are junk,
And no-one can understand Ein.”
—Anonymous.