|
|||||
Catalogue of the Music of Larry BellOpus number: 14Title: “Prologue” and “The End of the World” (texts by Archibald MacLeish) Instrumentation: chorus SATB Date written: 1982, New York,, Boston Length: seven minutes Commissioner: Juilliard Pre-College Chorus for commencement ceremonies Premiere performance: Juilliard Pre-College Chorus, Rebecca Scott, conductor, June 1982, Juilliard Theater, New York Texts: “Prologue” These alternate nights and days, these seasons somehow fail to convince me. It seems seems I have the sense of infinity O crew of Columbus (In your dreams) over the sea For that surf that breaks upon nothing Once I was waked by nightingales in the garden I thought What time is it? Is it time still? Now is it time? (Tell me your dreams O sailors: In sleep did you climb The tall masts and before you) the stillness of old trees is a leaning over the inertness Of hills is a kind of waiting. (In sleep, in a dream, did you see the world’s end? Did the water break and nore shore Did you see?) Strange faces come through the streets to me Like messangers I have been warned By the moving slowly of hands at a window O, I have the sense of infinity But the world, sailors, is round There say there is no end to it.
“The End of the World” Quite umexpectedly as Vasserot The armless ambidextrian was lighting A match between his great and second toe Ralph the lion was engaged biting the neck of Madame Sossman while the drum Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough In waltz time singing Jocko by the thumb Quite unexpectedly the top blew off: And there, there overhead, hung over Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes, There is the starless dark, the poise, the however, There with vast wings across the canceled skies, Ther in the sudden blackness, the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all. All music is published by Casa Rustica Publications, 73 Hemenway Street, #501, Boston, Massachusetts 02115 |
|||||
