Text Comments:
I speak of that great house
Beyond the hunting woods,
Turreted and towered
In nineteenth-century style,
Where fireflies by the hundreds
Leap in the long grass,
Odor of jessamine
And roses, canker-bit,
Recalling famous times
When dame and maiden sipped
Sassafras or wild
Elderberry wine,
While far in the hunting woods
Men after their red hounds
Pursued the mythic beast.
I ask it of a stranger,
In all that great house finding
Not any living thing,
Or of the wind and the weather,
What charm was in that wine
That they should vanish so,
Ladies in their stiff
Bone and clean of limb,
And over the hunting woods
What mist had made them wild
That gentlemen should lose
Not only the beast in view
But Belle and Ginger too,
Nor home from the hunting woods
Ever, ever come?
This entry contributed by Andy Vores around 11/21/98. The contributor(s) composed the song.
Music Comments:
Hangs higher than previous two songs in the set. dotted half=58. From the composer's foreward:
The author of Birdsong is unknown. The poem is preserved in manuscript. Again in this poem, the author is able to rise above the living conditions to focus on the loveliness of life. The voice and saxophone are equal partners in this song, and the main stanzas are separated by a series of interludes where the voice and saxophone combine in a wordless duo.
Text Comments:
He doesn't know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn't go out. He doesn't know what birds know best Nor what I want to sing about, That the world is full of loveliness. When dewdrops sparkle in the grass, And earth's aflood with morning light, A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live. Hey, try to open up your heart To beauty; go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if the tears obscure your way You'll know how wonderful it is to be alive.
Music Comments:
"Rather jovial" quarter = 104. Frequent meter changes between 1/4/, 3/4, 2/4, 4/4, and 7/16. Some strong dissonances within piano part and between piano and voice suggest difficult to tune for vocalist, and demanding of a reasonably sophisticated audience.
Text Comments:
Composer provides these definitions: "Loreless--without learning. Redeless--without counsel. Reckless--heedless. Lither thing--evil things." Full text: "Bishop loreless, King redeless, Young men reckless, Old man witless, Woman shameless, I swear by heaven's king, Those be five lither thing!"
This entry contributed by G&K around 11/26/98. The contributor(s) looked over the song.
Music Comments:
Tempo-Appassionato- quarter note =one beat @ 85
Performance time-2:15
Audience- Educated classical music lovers
No special technical difficulties-direct, clear, moving
See http://come.to/paulstouffer
Text Comments:
Serious text having to do with "Who are you? Who are we? Who are they?
This entry contributed by Paul M. Stouffer around 3/13/99. The contributor(s) composed the song.
Music Comments:
Smooth and quick, dotted quarter = 88. A short six measures in which the voice part is marked to be sung in one breath. Hangs around a Bb4. More dissonant than first two songs. Open, almost two-voice contrapuntal texture.
Text Comments:
Were it indeed an accident of fate That she looks on the gentle earth and the seemingly gentle sky Through one brown, and one blue eye.
This entry contributed by G&K around 2/15/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song.
Music Comments:
Clarinet solo, leading into tenor solo, leading into flute solo, and ending with piano and triangle soft punctuation. all over a held string chord.
Text Comments:
More poetry is said to come from Wisconsin...
This entry contributed by G&K around 2/21/99. The contributor(s) looked over the song.
Music Comments:
Many optional notes. Commissioned and Premiered by the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music; Miciko Hirayama, Soprano 7/78. This piece, which has become nearly legendary among devotees of electronic music as the most expressive and powerful of all electronic pieces with voice, can be performed live with the tape. It makes stringent demands on the singer. It has been performed both by sopranos and mezzos, the latter with some adjustments.
Text Comments:
Poem by Tristram Corbiere as Translated by Patrick Creagh
Recordings:
Recorded CRI SD-296
This entry contributed by John Eaton around 3/20/99. The contributor(s) composed the song.
Music Comments:
lies rather high but with
lots of optional notes.
The cycle concludes with a transcription for voice and orchestra of an electronic composition of mine from 1967, one of the first pieces written for live performance on modern sound synthesizers -- the first was my Songs for R.P.B. from 1965. For about five years after that earlier piece, I made my living as an "electronic troubadour", giving more than a thousand concerts on the Syn-Ket and an early Moog modular synthesizer. One of the pieces I often performed was a setting of this poem by Tristan Corbiere, translated, again, by Patrick Creagh. It is an expressionistic evocation of a blind man, raising his blazing, hollow pits towards the heavens in a raw cry of desperation. The hammer strokes of fate, so to speak, delivered in the electronic version by the sequences generated on the Moog, are contrasted with the cries of inner anguish of the blind man, produced on the early touch sensitive keyboards of the Syn-Ket. In the orchestral version, the earlier is replaced by trombones and tenor drum; the latter, by a mournful solo oboe. Again, as in the first and third songs of the cycle, there is a preponderance of the tritone interval; but, this time there is no resolution at the end. To paraphrase Patrick Creagh: "I used to believe in God and light; now I believe in the dark, and light a candle."
Text Comments:
Trans. by Patrick Creagh.
The murdered eye is not dead yet
A wedge still splits into it
Coffinless I am left to lie
Nailed through the jelly of the eye
But the nailed eye is not dead yet
A wedge still edges into it
Deus misericors
Deus misericors
The hatchet that will hack the cross
Batters my head into a hash
Deus misericors
Deus misericors
Over my body the birds of death
Circling thirsty for my flesh
Golgotha without end for me
Lama lama sabacthani
Over my body the birds of death
Circle thirsting for my flesh
Red hot as the heart of Etna
Is the raw rim of this crater
Sodden and drooling lava
Like an old hag's toothless laughter
The red rim of this crater
Rabid as the heart of Etna
Circles of gold is all I see
And the white sun gnaws at me
Two holes pierced by an iron nail
Hammered in the forge of hell
A ring of gold is all I see
And the red fire enrages me
In the marrow bone a hurt
Tear shrieking to get out
Inside a glimpse of paradise
Miserere de profundis
Through my split skull the hot
Weeping sulphur seeping out
Blessed the happy dead
The good man who died in God
The martyr and the chosen one
Set with the Virgin and her Son
O blessed the happy dead
Delivered man beloved of God
Dreaming the peace of the just
An old knight heavy with his rest
Outside he sleeps under the rain
Endless siesta cut in stone
Safe in the sanctus of the just
His grey eyes in their granite rest
But still I feel you smile on me
O yellow moors of Brittany
My rosary in my fingers still
And Christ's bones bleaching on the hill
I still gape at the sea
And the dead sky of Brittany
Forgive me if I pray outright
O my God if this is fate
My eyes two blazing fonts their lips
Ripped by the devil's fingertips
Forgive me if I cry out
O my God against this fate
I can hear the north wind mourn
I hear the death-cry of the horn
Foot on the noble stag's neck
With it I cry against my luck
I can hear the north wind mourn
And the knell of the horn
This entry contributed by John Eaton around 3/28/99. The contributor(s) composed the song.
