Ecstasy (viola)

Ecstasy was composed after re-reading the poems of Rilke after many years – and realizing that when reading them as a young man I could not have possibly understood them. The poems are unusual and remarkable in their vivid portrayal of the interior landscapes of the human psyche. Even when the poet describes something on the outside, it is but a representation of a state of being. In these two works, I was trying to capture something of the feeling expressed in some of Rilke’s poems of that ecstatic reception that we long for and only rarely experience when, in deep contemplation, the barriers of the external world evaporate, and one feels as large and unbounded as the entire universe.