Wednesday, July 27, 2011

AUGUST Preview — Nightfall

"Nightfall" is about memory, fragility, and the night sky.

I loosely modeled this song on Schumann's "Allnächtlich im Traume" in which the singer describes having a dream that his love has returned and loves him again. Each verse quickens to its end, as he comes back to reality, realizing again and again that it was just a dream. Here's Fritz Wunderlich's 1966 recording:

Translation: I see you every night in dreams, and see you greet me friendly, and crying out loudly I throw myself at your sweet feet. You look at me sorrowfully and shake your fair head: from your eyes trickle the pearly tear-drops. You say a gentle word to me and give me a sprig of cypress: I awake, and there is no sprig, and I have forgotten what the word was.


In a similar way, each verse of "Nightfall" gets lost in a memory before evaporating into nothing when jolted awake by reality. Until the end, that is, when the stars come out again, magically twinkling as before, and things are again as they once were...

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