The product of a Ford Foundation Grant for soprano, Phyllis Curtin, Floyd sought to write something specifically feminine and feminist. Mistral’s 1950 collection Poems de las Madres (The Mothers’ Poems) provided the first four of translator Anita Fleet’s sources: “Me ha besado” (He has kissed me), a woman’s meditation after conception; “La dulzura” (Gentleness), an address to the growing, sleeping child within; “Al esposo” (To my husband), a plea for understanding in late pregnancy; and “El amanecer” (At dawn), leading up to the actual moment of birth. The final poem “Meciendo” (Rocking), the mother’s lullaby to her child, came from Mistral’s 1922 collection Desolación (Desolation).
Floyd had always marveled at the awesome process of bringing new life into the world, and the cycle’s title came easily: The Mystery.
Experimenting with lighter instrumental colors and textures, Floyd wrote for an orchestra of strings, double winds, four horns, two trumpets and trombone. There is no tuba, but exotic accents sound from timpani, percussion, harp, and celesta.

— Thomas Holliday
Taken from Falling Up: the days
and nights of Carlisle Floyd