At the time of this pieces composition, my father was suffering from an ultimately terminal illness. Thus the sound, the concept of breath was very much on my mind. The flute provided an effective vehicle with which to explore such sounds, though in doing so I made no attempt at direct mimicry.

The title, taken from Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, appealed to me for a number of reasons beyond the obvious reference to breath. In its original context, the poem itself is an exhortation to allow oneself to surrender completely to the creative process. Through such surrender, one can begin to grasp the interconnectedness of all things, including life and death. In fact the Sonnets themselves were “written as a grave-monument” to a young dancer who had passed away just before Rilke began their writing. Rather than treat this death as a dark tragedy, he takes the opportunity to embark on an exuberant tribute to life, an exploration of the boundaries between life and death.

The piece begins with the flute alone, utilizing a variety of constrained internal sounds, of which breath is one type. Once the electronics enter, the flute begins to grow gradually more virtuosic and the breath quality is lost.

It is dedicated in my fathers loving memory.