When I read Pablo Neruda's poem El futoro es espacio, I was moved by the evocation of open, peaceful, and empty space. It reminded me both of the peaceful rest and the evocation of the inevitability of death in the pastoral landscape of Goethe's poem Wanderers Nacthlied and of Schubert's beautiful setting for piano and singer. I decided to set the text using the topic of horn fifths to evoke this pastoral farewell to life, much in the way that Schubert does in his song, and as Beethoven did in his ''Les Adieux'' sonata, Mahler in his 9th symphony, and György Ligeti in his Horn Trio.
