“I Like For You To Be Still” is an early poem by Pablo Neruda, first published and quoted from his collection “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” (1924).
It fascinated me with its uneven rhythmic structure, which I implemented into a musical canvas through frequently changing time signatures, floating rhythms and “delayed” resolutions in vocal part of certain key words, closing the verse lines (still, absent, you, soul, silence, stillness). The delayed resolutions are recreating a feeling of a barrier between the two in a relationship.
For the opening line of the poem (“I like for you to be still”), which returns twice, I have chosen to use half-spoken, half-sung manner of performance to bring in the feeling of intimacy. This line is accompanied by ominous percussive ostinato on muted string D and later with the return of the line - by the ostinato on plucked D string. The pitch D is acting as a tonal center, shifting to E temporary, just to return back to D. While most of the piece is diatonic, towards the end a dissonant chord on the word “died” is breaking the dreamy atmosphere and hinting at a possibility that the love subject may no longer be living or may be imaginary.
This setting of Pablo Neruda’s poem was written for and dedicated to Marc Callahan and Janice Park, the first performers of the piece.

“I Like For You To Be Still” is an early poem by Pablo Neruda, first published and quoted from his collection “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” (1924).
It fascinated me with its