“All the texts used in the Sechs Rilke-Lieder are taken from the first part of the Neue Gedichten the way Rainer Maria Rilke published them in 1907. I chose the poems upon first reading on the basis of two subjects—Love and Death. It was the baritone Olaf Bär who suggested using texts by Rilke. The poems are: Liebes-Lied, Grabmal eines jungen Mädchen, Geburt der Venus, Jugend-Bildnis meines Vaters, Morgue, and Todes-Erfahrung. The cycle is grouped around the third poem: Geburt der Venus, which is also the longest, lasting about 10 minutes. The other songs are 2 to 3 minutes long.
For the first time in ten years, I did not start with a preconceived model for the division of musical time, but instead used only the text as a guide to the timing.
As a genre, the “orchestral song” is a purely late Romantic genre, whose history begins with Hector Berlioz’s Nuits d’été. Since I have attempted to make the textual content as audible as possible, without falling into easy irony or an equally easy form of abstraction, the Sechs Rilke-Lieder seem to fit into this tradition.”

– Theo Verbey