Life Songs, book II
Singing the Sun, by David Dzubay
(2001)
1. The Ecchoing Green [William Blake] mp3 score
2. I taste a liquor never brewed [Emily Dickinson] mp3 score
3. The Cricket [Sappho] mp3 score
4. Song [Blake] mp3 score
5. The Eagle [Alfred Tennyson] mp3 score
6. Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling [Walt Whitman] mp3 score
7. Night [Blake] mp3 score
Duration: 16 minutes
Instrumentation: mezzo (optional male narrator), flute/piccolo/alto flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, cello
Program Note:
This piece was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation
The titles of Life Songs, Books I and II, dancesing in a green bay and Singing the Sun are paraphrases of lines from Do Not Go Gentle In To That Good Night, the famous Dylan Thomas poem. ("Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay," and "Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight"). I have plans for two further song collections deriving titles from that poem: Life Songs, Book III - Blazing Eyes/Blinding Sight, and Life Songs, Book IV - Fierce Tears (this last to finally include the Thomas poem itself)..
While dancesing in a green bay used poetry of E. E. Cummings exclusively, Singing the Sun uses text by five different poets. The poems in the present set are tied together by their relationship to the themes of sun, sing, and flight. The singer and narrator alternately sing and speak the texts. The sung poems, 1, 3, 5, 7, are observations of nature, describing sun and spring (1), sun and cricket (3), sun and eagle (5), and sun and moon (7). Spoken poems 2, 4, 6 are first-person, intimate declarations, presenting short narratives, with the passionate Whitman poem providing the dramatic anchor of the entire work, and leading without break into the concluding return to night. (David Dzubay)
Recordings:
 |
innova 588 dancesing in a green bay Chamber Music of David Dzubay. Voices of Change Available from CDEMusic: (888) 749-9998 / (518) 434-4110, Tower Records (1-800-275-8693) and Amazon |
Premiere: Singing the Sun was first performed July 11, 2001 at the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival, in Wintergreen, VA (David Wiley, Artistic Director and Conductor); Angela Horn, mezzo; David Dzubay, conductor.
Score Samples (first page of each of the seven movements):
Give me the splendid silent sun
with all his beams full-dazzling...
- Walt Whitman
1. from The Ecchoing Green [William Blake]
The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring;
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around
To the bells' chearful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
2. I taste a liquor never brewed [Emily Dickinson]
I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Learning against the sun!
3. The Cricket [Sappho]
When the sun dazzles the earth
with straight-falling flames,
a cricket rubs its wings
scraping up a shrill song.
4. Song [William Blake]
How sweet I roam'd from field to field,
And tasted all the summer's pride,
'Till I the prince of love beheld,
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He shew'd me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fir'd my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
6. Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling [Walt Whitman]
Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.
Hear me illustrious!
Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy touching-distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice–and thou O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic,
I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)
Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters North and South,
O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kanada's woods,
O'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
Thou that impartially infoldest all, not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions,
Strike through these chants.
Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself–prepare my lengthening shadows,
Prepare my starry nights.
7. from Night [William Blake]
The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon like a flower,
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.
