Resets for tenor and piano (2010)
texts by e.e. cummings, William Meredith, and William Carlos Williams
i no time ago (cummings)
ii A Major Work (Meredith)
iii Perfection (Williams
9 minutes
Written for Lonel Woods, each of these three otherwise unrelated songs presents a new setting of a poem I’d previously set before. The earlier setting of cummings’ “no time ago” closed a set of nine songs for two singers and chamber ensemble, and consisted of a simple melody sung freely over an accompaniment of unpitched ringing percussion; the new version retains the rhythmic freedom but is otherwise brand new. I first set “A Major Work” for performance at the annual poetry festival at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where William Meredith was the visiting poet. Meredith suffered a hugely incapacitating stroke in 1983; this was one of the few poems that he could actually speak. Unfortunately, the first setting was just not very good. This reset preserves the idea that “music is hard to hear”, but I hope responds more directly to the optimism of the closing lines of the poem. My 1993 setting of “Perfection” was nontonal; the new version adopts a 19th-century musical language in response to the humorous surprise of the Williams poem.
texts by e.e. cummings, William Meredith, and William Carlos Williams
i no time ago (cummings)
ii A Major Work (Meredith)
iii Perfection (Williams
9 minutes
Written for Lonel Woods, each of these three otherwise unrelated songs presents a new setting of a poem I’d previously set before. The earlier setting of cummings’ “no time ago” closed a set of nine songs for two singers and chamber ensemble, and consisted of a simple melody sung freely over an accompaniment of unpitched ringing percussion; the new version retains the rhythmic freedom but is otherwise brand new. I first set “A Major Work” for performance at the annual poetry festival at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where William Meredith was the visiting poet. Meredith suffered a hugely incapacitating stroke in 1983; this was one of the few poems that he could actually speak. Unfortunately, the first setting was just not very good. This reset preserves the idea that “music is hard to hear”, but I hope responds more directly to the optimism of the closing lines of the poem. My 1993 setting of “Perfection” was nontonal; the new version adopts a 19th-century musical language in response to the humorous surprise of the Williams poem.