Solo Vocal
Elegy for a Walnut Tree
This song aspires to be in conversation with “Der Lindenbaum" from Schubert’s Winterreise. In the Schubert song, the tree is the locus of the poet’s nostalgia and yearning for home. In “Elegy for a Walnut Tree,” Merwin considers how his life has been intertwined with this beloved tree since the time of his youth. More than an object that triggers nostalgia, Merwin’s walnut tree is a life companion. Old friend now there is no one alive who remembers when you were young it was high summer when I first saw you in the blaze of day most of my life ago with the dry grass whispering in your shade and already you had lived through wars and echoes of wars around your silence through days of parting and seasons of absence with the house emptying as the years went their way until it was home to bats and swallows and still when spring climbed toward summer you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened you and the seasons spoke the same language and all these years I have looked through your limbs to the river below and the roofs and the night and you were the way I saw the world
For the Anniversary of My Death
In this highly celebrated poem, by W. S. Merwin, each line offers a new, powerful jolt of insight. The poem holds both a sense of wonder and a despair for human fallibility -- both an expansive cosmic vision and a focused presence in the here and now. For the poet, his day of death was March 15, 2019, twenty-six years after he wrote the poem. Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what
The Gift
Louise Glück’s poem captures those astonishing moments when a child first begins to engage with the things and creatures around them and to use language to name the world. In a casual, unceremonious prayer, a child’s enthusiastic encounter with a dog is lifted up as something blessed. Lord, you may not recognize me speaking for someone else. I have a son. He is so little, so ignorant. He likes to stand at the screen door, calling oggie, oggie, entering language, and sometimes a dog will stop and come up the walk, perhaps accidentally. May he believe this is not an accident. At the screen welcoming each beast in love’s name, Your emissary. —Louise Glück, from The First Four Books of Poems, in Twentieth Century American Poetry
I Asked the Crow
A setting of a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo: So what are we doing here I ask the crow parading on the ledge of Falling that hangs over this precarious city? Crow just laughs and says wait, wait and see and I am waiting And not seeing anything, not just yet. But like the crow I collect the shine of anything beautiful I can find.
Into the Still Hollow
Premiered at Symphony Space in New York by Thomas Meglioranza and Reiko Uchida.. W. S. Merwin’s poem, “A Dance of Death” is linked to the tradition of the danse macabre or the Totentanz. In this medieval form, a series of individuals from a variety of social ranks parade before us, each offering a terse summary of their life. As quickly as they appear, they withdraw into death, and each concludes their brief narrative with the Latin phrase, “Quod, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio” [And behold, I now sleep in the dust.] The form of this piece is inspired by Beethoven’s song, “An die ferne Geliebte.” Beethoven’s song has six contrasted sections that are united thematically to form a coherent cycle. This general plan seemed well-suited to Merwin’s poem, which introduces six distinctive characters in succession. “Into the Still Hollow” is a set of variations on the melody that is first presented by a King, and is then taken up by a Monk, a Scholar, a Huntsman, a Farmer, and a Woman, each of whom projects a distinct personality and life-path. The poet himself appears at the end to offer an epitaph and to join in the inevitable procession to the grave. King I saw from a silk pillow all high stations and low smile when I spoke, and bow, and obey and follow. All men do as I do. I went in gold and yellow, ermine and gemmed shoe, and was human even so, et, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormo. Monk I hoped that all sinners who wore a saintly sorrow into heaven should go. All this did I do: Walk with the eyes low, keep lonely pillow, many days go fasting and hollow, all my bounty bestow, et, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio. Scholar I sat like a shadow the light sallow, reasoning yes and no. One thing I came to know. I heard the mouse go, heard whispers in the tallow, wind disputing, "although. . . ." Night on the candle blow. et, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio. Huntsman The wind blew in the cold furrow; The falcon flew, These did I follow: Deerhound, doe, fox upon snow, and sent the arrow, and was chased, who did follow, and came to this burrow, et, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio. Farmer I walked with plow on the green fallow all I did harrow dirt does undo. Out at elbow I lie to mellow set in a furrow the weeds' fellow. Quod, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio. Woman I was as green willow, my hands white and slow love and increase below. Be reaped as you did sow. I am bitter as rue. Now am I also defaced and hollow nursing no shadow Quod, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio. Epitaph Lords, I forget what I knew; I saw false and true, sad and antic show, did profane and hallow, I saw the worthies go into the still hollow and wrote their words, even so, et, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio
It Nests Within Each Cell
This song celebrates the wedding of Helen Stuhr-Rommereim and Michael Schapira on July 13, 2019. The text is by May Swenson: Love is little, and not loud, It nests within each cell, It cannot be split. It is a ray, a seed, a note a word, A secret motion of our air and blood. It is not alien, it is near, Our very skin, A sheath to keep us pure of fear.
Rings of Birch Bark
In his poem titled “Love Song 2,” A. R. Ammons contemplates the way in which our physical bodies dissolve into the cosmos, leaving behind only the slightest vestiges of our lives. When the wood decays, the rings of birchbark stay in place as a reminder of the tree’s presence, just as the song persists beyond death as a trace of the poet’s love. Rings of birch bark stand in the woods still circling the nearly vanished log: After we are gone to pass through log and star these white songs will hug us together in the woods of some lover’s head.
Time and Wind
The text of this piece consists of a few disconnected fragments from the first chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses that are placed together in a collage-like arrangement. These non sequiturs enter inexplicably into the main character Stephen Dedalus’s stream of thought. Without spelling things out, they point toward an awareness of deep time, and they allude to a certain guiding intelligence in nature. text: These heavy sands are language time and wind have silted here. . . . tranquil brightness . . . form of forms . . tranquility vast, candescent . . . . . . form of forms