Brandon Nelson

Stéphane Mallarmé was a French poet active in the late 19th century. His work, highly unusual for the time, was inspiration for Debussy and Schoenberg.

The reader grapples with great metaphysical questions, existential doubt, strangeness, and uncertainty;
with rhythms of fragmentation and silence; dislocated syntax; the rapid formation, transmutation, and
evaporation of images; and thoughts that seem to escape being fixed into any one interpretation.

As he once said: “Paint not the thing itself, but the effect it produces.”

I have chosen excerpts from several of his poems as inspiration for some tone painting. While some “contemporary” effects are employed, I decided to try to use more traditional resources to create the strange twists and turns of Mallarmé’s world.

Recording and sales information will be made available after the premiere (late autumn 2023)