Furchte Dich Nichte

Fürchte Dich Nicht takes its title and text from a short poem by Rainer Maria Rilke: "Fürchte dich nicht, sind die Astern auch alt..." ("Do not fear, though the asters are old..."). I discovered Rilke's poetry as a college freshman, and this piece - written that same year, for flute, trumpet, and string quintet - was my first attempt to set his work. Rilke's poem reframes autumn's decay as transformation: the storm that scatters the withering wood, the beauty that has "ripened" and breaks its old vessel open with gentle force. Nothing in the poem is at rest - it moves from the trees into us, unwilling to stay still, no longer needing shelter.

The piece was composed as a modeling exercise after Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question, and it borrows that work's central idea: a static, unchanging backdrop against which a searching, unresolved voice repeatedly asks something that is never quite answered. Where Ives leaves his question suspended, Fürchte dich nicht turns toward Rilke's answer instead - not resolution in the traditional sense, but a kind of permission to stop needing one.