Composed for soprano, four celli, and harp, this luminous piece shows how postmodern compositional techniques can result in pure, crystalline beauty that dazzles the ear. Henze chose the poem from Arthur Rimbaud's Les Illuminations that begins "Devant une neige, un E^tre de Beaute' de haute taille" (Against the snow a high-statured Being of Beauty), yet he might as well have been setting the phone book for the amount of text that the listener can comprehend. Understanding the sung text, as in much Italian opera, just isn't very important in this piece. Each phrase is set as its own miniature aria, and the phrases are separated by instrumental interludes. This breaking up of the poem into individual lines, and then the lines and words themselves into syllables (a "filamental" treatment, as Henze put it), is a familiar serialist compositional device, but—unlike in many pieces—here it works, because Henze captures the essence, the Platonic form perhaps, hovering behind the words. The sound world here is reminiscent of the mad Hilda Mack's music in the opera Elegy for Young Lovers, composed a few years earlier. Henze reported that impressions of his first visit to New York City forced their way into the music: "Cooing of doves, seagulls that screech around the growth of smooth, Abruzzi-coloured metals on the walls of skyscrapers, asphalt rain."





© All Music Guide