Opus number: op. 108

Title: The Echolocations of Cellos

Instrumentation: Tenor, Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone, and Soprano soloists, Harp, Piano, Harpsichord, and Guitar

Text: Elizabeth Kirschner

Texts: click here

THE ECHOLOCATIONS OF CELLOS

At the end of the seasons there comes
the timeliness of rain, its scented veil, a deluge

that casts about, assaults the earth with soft,
wet drops. The sea slides on its silks, the forests

tingle with the lamb’s wool tamped down inside roseate
mosses and the drops resound with the vibrations of

tubular bells. The coral mushrooms glow like Chinese lanterns
and the streams plait themselves into green gold braids

while red fish silently open their mouths like voluptuous
roses filled with the language of violins.

Enter the opulent banquet, glades like silhouettes of
a woman’s hips, twilights steeping in honeyed tea.

Let’s feast with blue deer in eel grass, be guided by
the velvet pearls inside stars that bird their way into

hearts that are suede pockets holding the minted riches
that come at the end of the seasons. Therein, a finale

of rain, its quiet gestures in the calm that is the soul’s
inmost climate. The birds, now silent, dip into watery

mirrors like tiny monks, drink in the crème de le crème
flowing in straws of music. Rising up, the Indian Pipe,

the mingling of misty breath in portly clouds. At the end
of the seasons, when the rains do come, the hemlocks,

statuesque and black, bend but do not break and out of
everywhere comes a slow descant, the echolocations of cellos,

a yielding to the hidden light in the ethereal throats of lilies.
There is a melancholy that mulls, like the spice titillating cider,

and it slowly pulls the salty wave upon the sugars of cinnamon
sandbars. Always the vocal slide, a marriage of lips to song,

even in the rain, the lowlife of harmonious rain, with the succulence
of ruddy pears and the gorgeous silence that follows, a still life
of a valley of silence, the sleep inside the wind and the never-ending
colorama of dreams sea swept into heaven’s weightless ballast.

Finally, the resurrection of singers responding to the echolocation of cellos,
the batons lifted like the featherbones in angelic wings, the whirring,

the swish of a hummingbird, its indelible voiceprint eternally aloft
at the end of the seasons when the rains do come, gently, gently.

And the waters are still. Then comes the ovation of birds.

Date written: 2010

Length: ten and a half minutes

Premiere performance: May 19, 2011, Brown Hall at New England Conservatory, Erin Holmes, soprano; Bethany Tammaro Condon, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Gregg, tenor; Philip Lima, baritone; John Muratore, guitarist, Maja Tremiszewska, pianist; Ina Zdorovetchi, harpist, Paul Cienniwa, harpsichordist, Larry Bell, conductor

Subsequent performances: January 16, 2012, First Church Boston. Erin Holmes, soprano; Bethany Tammaro Condon, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Gregg, tenor; Philip Lima, baritone; Daniel Ascadi, guitarist, Maja Tremiszewska, pianist; Ina Zdorovetchi, harpist, Paul Cienniwa, harpsichordist, Larry Bell, conductor

Program notes: These song cycles represent my four-part work called The Seasons, op. 101. Each of the four song cycles contains five songs and can be performed on its own. Fall: Autumnal Raptures, written in 2006 for tenor and harp, was especially conceived for Thomas Gregg and Emily Laurance. Winter: Exaltations of Snowy Stars is for mezzo-soprano and piano and was written for and first performed by D’Anna Fortunato and myself in January of 2008; here it is sung by Bethany Tammaro Condon. Spring: In a Garden of Dreamers, was written for Phillip Lima in the fall of 2009 and is scored for baritone and harpsichord. The final set Summer: The Fragrant Pathway of Eternity, is scored for soprano and guitar.

The most important element uniting these works is their common poet, Elizabeth Kirschner. Elizabeth’s poetry inspired each song in ways that I cannot consciously explain–nor would I wish to if I could. The poems are profoundly intimate, refreshingly free of pessimism, and vividly imagistic. Most importantly, perhaps, is that they clearly originate from a determining artistic personality that feels perfectly suited to my own.

Recording: Thomas Gregg, Ina Zdorovetchi, Bethany Tammaro Condon, Philip Lima, Paul Cienniwa, Erin Holmes, and John Muratore, Larry Bell, conductor. Larry Bell: In a Garden of Dreamers, Albany Records, 1308/09