Für Dich — For You is based on the poem Liebes-Lied by Rainer Maria Rilke and its newest translation into English, Love Song, by Canadian poet and writer Norbert Ruebsaat.

The compositional process of Für Dich — For You was an intense encounter with Rilke’s words, not unlike an encounter with the experience of love itself and all its unsettling, complex emotional states. Love, like birth or death, tears us out of the routine of daily life, wakes us up, alerts us to what is, creates moments of truth, often stirs us to make changes, to take new risks. The poem speaks of one person’s love to another, but also and perhaps more importantly about love as an inner state towards life and the world as a whole. In the face of ecological disasters and global economic imbalances, as well as widespread practices of terror, war, and hate, it suddenly seemed to be a matter of survival to learn more about love and about how to act from the heart. Composing this piece was part of this process of learning.

On another level the composition explores a sense of place and belonging, of home and love. To underscore this context, the sound sources for the piece consist of specific sounds from two places that have created a sense of belonging in me: North Germany where I was born and grew up and Vancouver and the westcoast of Canada where I have lived for over thirty years as an immigrant. These sounds form the sonic / musical language of the piece together with the recorded voices (male and female) of people close to me, speaking the poem, both in German and English.

To open oneself to one’s original language and culture again, after having lived as an immigrant in the country of one’s choice for a long time, is like opening oneself to an almost forgotten deep love and connection to that past place. At the same time, one has lived and functioned in the country of one’s choice for many years, one has established one’s very own home, one’s family. One feels at home here. It is the right place to be. It also is a place of belonging and love. Thus, the piece is an exploration of the heart, an exploration of where the heart is located in connection to culture, language and people. In a globalized world where millions of us are on the move, whether as refugees, immigrants or just as travelers, this has emerged as a wide-spread and relevant theme, as we are all in some way searching for home and connectedness.

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Für Dich — For You was realized in 2005 at the studios of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM, Germany), the Sonic Research Studio of Simon Fraser University (SFU) (Vancouver, BC) and the composer’s studio in Vancouver (Canada) and premiered on February 11, 2005 during the festival trans_canada at the ZKM_Medientheater in Karlsruhe (Germany). The piece was commissioned by the ZKM. Thanks to all who spent valuable hours with me exploring and reading the poem; recorded readers are: Wendelin Bartley, Susan Benson, Anne Bourne, Louie Ettling, Peter Grant, Andra McCartney, Norbert Ruebsaat, Sonja Ruebsaat, Susanna Ruebsaat, R Murray Schafer, Agnes Westerkamp, and Hildegard Westerkamp.

Premiere

• February 11, 2005, trans_canada: Paysages • Landschaften • Landscape, ZKM_Medientheater, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg, Germany)