Opus number: 53

Title: Ten Poems of William Blake

Instrumentation: soprano and piano

Date written: May 2000

Length: twenty-four minutes

Performances: The Boston Conservatory, Catherine Thorpe, soprano, Larry Bell, piano, November 17, 2000.

Recording: tape at The Boston Conservatory library

Publisher: Ione Press, a Division of ECS Publishing

Program notes: Ten Poems of William Blake (based on William Blake’s  Songs of Innocence and of Experience)

Songs of Innocence: Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child
And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb;
So I piped with merry cheer,
Piper pipe that song again––
So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.

Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read––
So he vanish’d from my sight.
And I plucked a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear

The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed,
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice:
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by hs name.
Little Lamb God bless thee,
Little Lamb God bless thee.

Nurse’s Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still

Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of the night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies

No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly
And the hills are all covered with sheep

Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d
And all the hills ecchoed

Infant Joy

I have no name
I am but two days old.–
What shall I call thee?
Happy I am
Joy is my name,–
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old.
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.

Spring

Sound the flute!
Now it’s mute.
Birds delight
Day and Night.
Nigtingale
In the dale
Lark in Sky
Merrily
Merrily Merrily to welcome in the Year

Little Boy
Full of joy.
Little Girl
Sweet and small.
Cock does crow
So do you.
Merry voice
Infant noise
Merrily Merrily to welcome in the Year

Little Lamb
Here I am,
Come and lick
My white neck.
Let me pull
Your soft Wool.
Let me kiss
Your soft face.
Merrily Merrily we welcome in the Year

Songs of Experience: Introduction

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk’d among the ancient trees.

Calling the lapsed Soul
and weeping in the evening dew:
That might controll
The starry pole:
And fallen fallen light renew!

O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.

Turn away no more:
Why wilt though turn away
The starry floor
The watry shore
Is giv’n thee till the break of day.

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love.
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The Sick Rose

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of they heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

Youth of delight come hither,
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason,
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze.
Tangled roots perplex her ways,
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead:
And feel they know not what but care:
And wish to lead others when they should be led

Opus number: 50

Title: “The Immortal Beloved” (based on letters by Ludwig van Beethoven)

Instrumentation: mezzo-soprano and piano

Date written: Summer 1999, Boston

Length: seventeen minutes

Commissioner and dedicatee: Judy May

Premiere performance: Judy May, mezzo-soprano, Larry Bell, pianist, November 11, 1999, Williams Hall, New England Conservatory

Important subsequent performances: Community Concert of Rhode Island, November 12, 1999 and Arizona State University, October 2000, Judy May, mezzo soprano, Larry Bell, pianist. Woodstock Fringe American Song/Fest, D’Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano, Larry Bell, pianist, August, 2003.

Recording: Albany Records CD (Troy741) D’Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano, Larry Bell, pianist.

Program notes: “The Immortal Beloved” is a song cycle based on the three letters that Beethoven wrote for Antonie Brentano in July 1812. It was written in June of 1999 for the mezzo-soprano Judy May and conceived from the point of view of the recipient of the letters.

The letters show Beethoven’s extraordinary ambivalence towards romantic commitment yet they also have an emotional immediacy and are genuinely heart-felt. This cycle of three songs is permeated with references to Beethoven’s own song cycle “An die Ferne Geliebte” (“To the Distant Beloved”). A fragment of his cycle is quoted towards the end.

            The texts are taken from a compilation of two translations, edited, of Beethoven’s three letters, written in July 1812, to a mysterious woman historians referred to for one hundred and fifty years simply as “the Immortal Beloved.” Due to research by Maynard Solomon, we now know the recipient to be Antonie Brentano.

I. July 6, 1812, in the morning

“My angel, my all, my very self–Why this deep sorrow when necessity speaks–can our love endure except by demanding everything from one another; can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine–Oh God, look out into the beauties of nature and comfort your heart. You forget so easily that I must live for me and for you. If we were united you would feel the pain of it as little as I.

–My journey was a fearful one; I did not reach here until four o’clock in the morning. The post coach chose an awful route; I was warned not to travel at night; I was made fearful of a forest, but that only made me the more eager–and I was wrong. The coach broke down on the wretched, bottomless mud road. Esterházy, traveling by the usual road here, had the same fate with eight horses that I had with four–Yet I got some pleasure out of it, as I always do when I successfully overcome difficulties–

Now a quick change to things internal from things external. We shall surely see each other soon. My heart is full of so many things to say to you–ah–there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all–Cheer up–remain my true, my only treasure, my all as I am yours. The gods must send the rest, what for us must be and shall be–”

II. Evening, Monday, July 6

“My dearest creature–You are suffering–Ah, wherever I am you are with me. I will arrange to live with you. What a life!!!! Without you–persecuted by the goodness of man–which I little deserve as I little care to deserve it. Humility of man towards man–it pains me–and when I consider myself in relation to the universe, what am I and what is He–and yet–herein lies the divine in man. Much as you love me–I love you more. But never conceal your thoughts from me. Oh God–so near! so far! Is not our love truly a heavenly structure, firm as the vault of Heaven?–

III. Good morning, on July 7.

“While still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, will fate take pity on us. Either I must live only with you or not at all. Yes, I have resolved to wander in distant lands until I can fly to your arms. Yes, it must be so. You know my faithfulness to you. No one else can ever possess my heart–never–never. Oh God, why must one part from one whom one so loves. Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men–At my age I need a steady, quiet life–can that be so in our connection? My angel, Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our aim to live together–Be calm–love me– today–yesterday–what tearful longings for you–you–you–my life–my all–farewell.–Oh continue to love me–never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine

ever mine

ever ours”

Translation arranged from Thayer-Forbes Briefe no. 582, Letters no. 373.

Opus number: 49

Title: Two Haiku (translations of Japanese Haiku)

Instrumentation: soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano

Date written: February 1999, Boston

Length: three minutes

Commissioner: Fred Cohen, Currents, University of Richmond, Virginia

Premiere performance: Currents, Fred Cohen, conducting, March 1999

Important subsequent performances: Boston Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble, Larry Bell, conducting, May 2, 1999

Recordings: tape at The Boston Conservatory

Program notes: Two Haiku was commissioned by Fred Cohen for the Currents ensemble and first performed in Richmond, Virginia, in March 1999 at the America Haiku Association conference. It is written for the “Pierrot” ensemble and uses texts by Santoka and Issa, respectively.

Texts: 1. Alone silently

the bamboo shoot

becomes a bamboo

2. out from darkness

back into darkness

affairs of the cat

Opus number: 42

Title: A Cry Against the Twilight (text by Wallace Stevens)

Instrumentation: five solo voices SSATB

Date written: 1996, Boston

Length: fifteen minutes

Commissioner and dedicatee: Modus Novus, San Francisco

Premiere performance: Modus Novus, San Francisco, California, St. Gregory’s Church, May 19, 1996; Cheryl Keller, soprano; Marcia Gronewold, mezzo soprano; Lynne Morrow, mezzo soprano; Sanford Dole, tenor; and John Corry, bass-baritone.

Program notes:  Following performances in the fall of 1995 of the madrigal Domination of Black, the members of Modus Novus in San Francisco asked Bell to write a set of companion pieces. The result is this group of eight songs on poems of Wallace Stevens that deal with light and dark, death and life. The works were arranged for brass quintet. See op. 48.

1. Valley Candle
My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.
Then beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.

2. Tattoo
The light is like a spider.
It crowds over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there–
Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.

3. Tea

When the elephants-ear in the park
Shriveled in frost,
And the leaves on the paths
Ran like rats,
Your lamp-light fell
On shining pillows,
Of sea-shades and sky-shades,
Like umbrellas in Java.

4. Infanta Marina
Her terrace was the sand
And the palms and the twilight.
She made of the motions of her wrist
The grandiose gestures
Of her thought.
The rumpling of the plumes
Of this creature of the evening
Came to be sleights of sails
Over the sea.
And thus she roamed
In the roamings of her fan,
Partaking of the sea,
And of the evening
As they flowed around
And uttered their subsiding sound.

5. Domination of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning n the wind
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the
hemlocks
Down to the ground.

I heard them cry–the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twlight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails fo the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy
hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

6. The Death of a Soldier

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does ot become a three-days personage,
Imposing his spearation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,
When the wind stops and,
over the heavens,
The closes go, nevertheless
In their direction.

7. Lunar Paraphrase

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.
When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost,
shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted
and fallen’
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers
in darkness–
The mother is the mother of pathos
and pity.

8. Sonatina to Hans Christian

If any duck in any brook,
Fluttering the water
For your crumb,
Seemed the helpless daughter
Of a mother
Regretful that she bore her;
Or of another,
Barren and longing for her;
What of the dove,
Or thrush or any singing mysteries?
What of the trees
And intonations of the trees?
What of the night
That lights and dims the stars?
Do you know, Hans Christian,
Now that you see the night?

Opus number: 20

Title: “Four Sacred Songs” Text: Old hymn tunes

Instrumentation: soprano and piano

Date written: July 1984, Boston, Mass.

Length: sixteen minutes

Premiere performance: Rebecca Scott, soprano, Melville Brown, pianist, January 15, 1985, Whitney Museum Sculpture Court, New York

Important subsequent performances: Mary Saunders, soprano, Michael Dewart, pianist, March 1986, Boston Conservatory; Mary Saunders, Larry Bell, April 20, 1985; Saunders and Bell, November 10, 1988, Boston Conservatory. D’Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano; Larry Bell, piano, Woodstock Fringe American Song/Fest, August 2003, Woodstock, NY

Recordings: Albany Records CD (Troy741)  D’Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano; Larry Bell, piano. Performance tapes of both Saunders and Bell performances at The Boston Conservatory library.

Program notes:  Four Sacred Songs were written in July 1984 in Boston and were designed as studies for a larger commissioned orchestral work entitled Sacred Symphonies. Each song is a setting of a familiar hymn tune text; the music, however, makes no references to the original hymn tunes. The first and fourth songs are written in a popular American style combining secular and sacred elements. The second song is optimistic, and evangelical and the third song represents the tragic aspects of aggressive violence. Each song is strophic and has three verses. The set ends “transcendently” with a prayer of humility. The world premiere was given in New York 15 January 1985 by Rebecca Scott; Mary Saunders presented the Boston premiere in April 1985.

1. There is a fountain (William Cowper)

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains:
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away:
Wash all my sins away,
Wash all m sins away;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.

Ever since, by faith, I saw the stream,
Thy flowing wounds supply;
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die
And shall be till I die,
And shall be till I die;
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.

2. Take the Name of Jesus With You (Mrs. Lydia Baxter)

Take the name of Jesus with Child of sorrow and of woe;
It will joy and confort give you,
Take it, then, whee’er you go.
(Chorus) Precious name, O how sweet!
Hope of earth and joy of Heav’n;
Precious name O how sweet!
Hope of earth and joy of Heav’n.

Take the name of Jesus ever,
As a shield from ev’ry snare; If temptations round you gather,
Breathe that holy name in prayer. (Chorus)

O the Precious name of Jesus
How it thrills our souls with joy,
When His loving arms receive us,
And His songs our togues employ!
(Chorus)

3. Stand up, stand up, for Jesus (George Duffield)

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
Ye soldiers of the cross,
Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss;
From vict’ry unto vict’ry,
His army shall He lead,
Till ev’ry foe is vanquished
And Christ is Lord indeed.

Stand up, stand up, for Jesus,
The trumpet call obey;
Forth to the mighty conflict,
In this His glorious day.
“Ye that are men now serve Him,”
Against unnumbered foes;
Let courage rise with danger,
And strength to strength oppose.

Stand up, stand up, for Jesus,
Stand in His strength alone;
The arm of flesh will fail you
Ye dare not trust your own;
Put on the gospel armor,
Each piece put on with prayer,
Where duty calls, or danger,
Be never wanting there.

4. Spirit of God descend upon my heart (George Croly)

Spirit of God descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness mighty as Thou art,
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
To check the rising dout the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.
(Repeat first verse)

Title:  “Incident” (text by Countee Cullen)

Instrumentation: baritone and piano

Date written: June 1984, Boston

Length: three minutes

Premiere performance: Robert Honeysucker, baritone, Michael Dewart, piano, Bell-Bartlett Concerts, March 1986, First and Second Church in Boston

Program notes: “Incident is based on a text by Countee Cullen that depicts the loss of innocence and recognition of racial prejudice. The work’s most prominent formal feature is its change from all white notes to all black notes at the central reversal in the poem. It was written after the composer’s brief, but intense, jury duty in Suffolk County.

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a Baltimorean

Keep looking strait at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was not whit bigger;

And so I smiled, but he poked out

His tongue, and called me “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

That’s all that I remember.

Opus number: 14

Title: “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.

Mezzo-soprano and piano

Opus number: 8

Title: Reality Is An Activity of the Most August Imagination (text by Wallace Stevens)

Instrumentation: mezzo soprano and piano

Date written: 1977, Juilliard School, New York

Length: five minutes

Premiere performance: Judith Malafronte, soprano, Larry Bell, pianist, April 17, 1980, Paul Hall, The Juilliard School

Program notes:  “Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination” for soprano and piano was written in 1977 and originally was intended to be half of a song cycle based on two poems of Wallace Stevens. The music to the other song, “The Poems of Our Climate” has been written and revised many times, but, to my mind, it is incomplete.

The form of the music is an athematic arch suggested by the form as well as the content of the poem. I think the poem is about natural light and its relationship to human feeling. In simple terms, I wanted the music to act as fireworks going up, reaching a brilliant apogee, and then dissolving into darkness. This, like many of Stevens’s poems, seems to begin in the real and end in the imagination and I tried to make the music correspond on every level to the demands of the poetry. The work concludes with an almost unrecognizable restatement of the first vocal phrase.

Text:

Last Friday, in the big light of last Friday night,
We drove home from Cornwall to Hartford, late.
It was not a night blown at a glassworks in Vienna
Or Venice, motionless, gathering time and dust.
There was a crush of strength in a grinding going round,
Under the front of the westward evening star,
The vigor of glory, a glittering in the veins,
As things emerged and moved and were dissolved,
Either in distance, change or nothingness,
The visible transformations of summer night,
An argentine abstraction approaching form
And suddenly denying itself away.
There was an insolid billowing of the solid.
Night’s moonlight lake was neither water nor air