Alan Taylor - 'And it's hard, being dead', for piano

The words in the title are contained in the following extract from the First Duino Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke.

"True, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to use no longer customs scarcely acquired,
not to interpret roses, and other things
that promise so much, in terms of a human future;
to be no longer all that one used to be, and to lay aside
even one's proper name like a broken toy. Strange
to see all that was once relation so loosely fluttering
hither and thither in space. And it's hard, being dead,
and full of retrieving before one begins to perceive
a little eternity."

Translation by J B Leishman, in the Penguin Modern European Poets series, published 1964.

I would like to thank Sam Liu, a fellow student at Trinity College of Music, for working with me on the draft piece, and making many helpful suggestions and comments. The piece improved enormously as a result of his help.

The piece consists of tiny fragments which grow into longer and more dramatic moments, often with a considerable amount of silence between events. There is no pulse, and therefore there are no bar lines.

It is important that the piece should be played exactly in tempo, with notes held for the exact time indicated, and yet with a considerable amount of passion in the busy sections. Extremes of dynamic will be required to achieve this effect.

Held chords are written in a way intended to make the correspondence with the more active fragments easier to follow, and so are often split up and connected with ties. They should not be re-articulated.