Dark Imagining Digital Booklet by Louis Levitt

DARK IMAGINING JEFF MYERS

Dark Imagining

by Jeff Myers

Rachel Schutz, soprano

Andrea Christie, piano

Christopher Gross, cello

Ashleé Miller, clarinet

Poe Songs

I. Bridal Ballad

II. The Lake

III. A Dream Within a Dream

IV. An Enigma

V. Alone

Boy

Baudelaire Songs

I. À celle qui est trop gaie

II. Obsession

III. La Beauté

The Hula Pa-Ipu

He Mele no Kāne

The Hula Manō

Myers

neer & Mastering - Ryan Streber

Poe Songs by Edgar Allan Poe Poe Songs by Edgar Allan Poe

Track 1: Bridal Ballad (1837 version)*

The ring is on my hand, And the wreath is on my brow— Satin and jewels grand, And many a rood of land, Are all at my command, And I am happy now!

He has loved me long and well, And, when he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell, For—the words were his who fell In the battle down the dell, And who is happy now!

And he spoke to re-assure me, And he kissed my pallid brow But a reverie came over me, And to the church-yard bore me, And I sighed to him before me, “O, I am happy now!”

And thus they said I plighted An irrevocable vow— And my friends are all delighted That his love I have requited— And my mind is much benighted If I am not happy now!

(refrain omitted)

I have spoken I have spoken They have registered the vow— And though my faith be broken, And though my heart be broken, Behold the golden token That proves me happy now!

Would God I could awaken! For I dream I know not how! And my soul is sorely shaken, Lest an evil step be taken, And the dead who is forsaken May not be happy now!

(reprise added)

The ring is on my hand, And the wreath is on my brow Satin and jewels grand, And many a rood of land…

* The original uses "satins" and "o'er," which I altered to "satin" and "over." Line 13 “reasure” was changed to “re-assure” for clarity.

Track 2: The Lake (v. A, E, F)* (1827-1845) (v. A, E, (1827-1845)

In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world a spot

The which I could not love the less— So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, as upon all, And the mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody—

Then ah, then I would awake

To the terror of that lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright, But a tremulous delight

And a feeling undefined, Springing from a darkened mind.

Death was in that poisoned wave And in its depth a fitting grave** For him who thence could solace bring To his dark imagining; Whose wild’ring thought could even make An Eden of that dim lake.

* The poem here starts with version F until "a tremulous delight," where it switches to version A in the next line.

** Version E uses "depth" here, which I preferred over "gulf."

Track 3: A Dream Within a Dream (1849) Track 3:

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow—

You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand—

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep—while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Track 4: An Enigma. (1848) 4: Enigma.

“Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce, “Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once

As easily as through a Naples bonnet—

Trash of all trash!—how can a lady don it?

Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff— Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff

Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.”

And, veritably, Sol is right enough.

The general tuckermanities are arrant

Bubbles—ephemeral and so transparent—

But this is, now,—you may depend upon it—

Stable, opaque, immortal—all by dint

Of the dear names that lie concealed within ’t.

Track 5: Alone (1829, pub. 1875) 5: (1829, pub. 1875)

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring— From the same source I have not taken My sorrow—I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain— From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

Track 6: Boy

6: Boy

by Jennifer de Guzman

by Jennifer Guzman

for my son

Problem child —

They may say

You’re a problem, child

You may think You’re a problem, child.

But —

You are the edges of my temper

You are the loose ends of my attention Bundled into four-foot-nothing of boy Into brown eyes, Brown hair, Long legs. You are all the energy I do not have, The streak of activity that whirls around me as I sit, Hands folded in my lap.

But —

You are not my tangle to unsnarl, to work, starting at the center and then outward, until a clean, smooth length of thread is in my hands and I can wind it through my fingers.

But instead —

I must learn

To chase while you run And to spread my arms wide, To be ready — when you have a moment to be still — to close them around you and then — Let you go again.

Baudelaire Songs by Charles Baudelaire Baudelaire Songs

by Charles Baudelaire

Track 7: À celle qui est trop gaie

Ta tête, ton geste, ton air

Sont beaux comme un beau paysage; Le rire joue en ton visage Comme un vent frais dans un ciel clair.

Le passant chagrin que tu frôles

Est ébloui par la santé

Qui jaillit comme une clarté De tes bras et de tes épaules.

Les retentissantes couleurs

Dont tu parsèmes tes toilettes Jettent dans l'esprit des poètes L'image d'un ballet de fleurs.

Ces robes folles sont l'emblème De ton esprit bariolé; Folle dont je suis affolé, Je te hais autant que je t'aime!

Quelquefois dans un beau jardin

Où je traînais mon atonie, J'ai senti, comme une ironie, Le soleil déchirer mon sein,

Et le printemps et la verdure

Ont tant humilié mon coeur, Que j'ai puni sur une fleur L'insolence de la Nature.

Ainsi je voudrais, une nuit, Quand l'heure des voluptés sonne, Vers les trésors de ta personne, Comme un lâche, ramper sans bruit,

Pour châtier ta chair joyeuse, Pour meurtrir ton sein pardonné, Et faire à ton flanc étonné Une blessure large et creuse,

Et, vertigineuse douceur!

À travers ces lèvres nouvelles, Plus éclatantes et plus belles, T'infuser mon venin, ma soeur!

Track 7: To One Who Is Too Gay 7: To Who Is Too

Your head, your bearing, your gestures Are fair as a fair countryside; Laughter plays on your face Like a cool wind in a clear sky.

The gloomy passer-by you meet Is dazzled by the glow of health Which radiates resplendently From your arms and shoulders.

The touches of sonorous color That you scatter on your dresses Cast into the minds of poets The image of a flower dance.

Those crazy frocks are the emblem Of your multi-colored nature; Mad woman whom I'm mad about, I hate and love you equally!

At times in a lovely garden

Where I dragged my atony, I have felt the sun tear my breast, As though it were in mockery;

Both the springtime and its verdure So mortified my heart That I punished a flower For the insolence of Nature.

Thus I should like, some night, When the hour for pleasure sounds, To creep softly, like a coward, Toward the treasures of your body,

To whip your joyous flesh And bruise your pardoned breast, To make in your astonished flank

A wide and gaping wound,

And, intoxicating sweetness! Through those new lips, More bright, more beautiful, To infuse my venom, my sister!

Track 8: Obsession Track

Grands bois, vous m'effrayez comme des cathédrales; Vous hurlez comme l'orgue; et dans nos coeurs maudits, Chambres d'éternel deuil où vibrent de vieux râles, Répondent les échos de vos De profundis.

Je te hais, Océan! tes bonds et tes tumultes,

Mon esprit les retrouve en lui; ce rire amer

De l'homme vaincu, plein de sanglots et d'insultes, Je l'entends dans le rire énorme de la mer

Comme tu me plairais, ô nuit! sans ces étoiles

Dont la lumière parle un langage connu! Car je cherche le vide, et le noir, et le nu!

Mais les ténèbres sont elles-mêmes des toiles

Où vivent, jaillissant de mon oeil par milliers, Des êtres disparus aux regards familiers.

Track 9: La Beauté 9:

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre, Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour, Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.

Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris; J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes; Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes, Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.

Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes, Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments, Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;

Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants, De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles: Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

Great woods, you frighten me like cathedrals; You roar like the organ; and in our cursed hearts, Rooms of endless mourning where old death-rattles sound,

Respond the echoes of your De profundis.

I hate you, Ocean! your bounding and your tumult, My mind finds them within itself; that bitter laugh Of the vanquished man, full of sobs and insults, I hear it in the immense laughter of the sea.

How I would like you, Night! without those stars Whose light speaks a language I know! For I seek emptiness, darkness, and nudity!

But the darkness is itself a canvas Upon which live, springing from my eyes by thousands, Beings with understanding looks, who have vanished.

Track 9: Beauty 9:

I am fair, O mortals! like a dream carved in stone, And my breast where each one in turn has bruised himself Is made to inspire in the poet a love As eternal and silent as matter.

On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx, I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans; I hate movement for it displaces lines, And never do I weep and never do I laugh.

Poets, before my grandiose poses, Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues, Will consume their lives in austere study;

For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers, Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful: My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Kauo pu ka ʻiwa kala paheʻe, Ka ʻiwa, ka manu o Kaula i ka makani.

E ka manu ou paniwai o Lehua, O nā manu kapu a Kuhai-moana, Mai hele a luna o Leinoai, O kolohe, o ālai mai ka Unulau.

Puniʻa iluna o ka Halauaola;

A ola aku i ka luna o Makaikioleo.

I ka lulu, i ka laʻi o kai maio, Ma ka ha ʻiwa i ka mole o Lehua i, Lehua!

O na lehua o Alakaʻi kaʻ u aloha,

O na lehua iluna o Ko'ialana;

Ua nonoho hoʻoipo me ke kohekohe;

Ua anu, maeʻele i ka ua noe.

Ua mai oe; kau a'e ka nana laua nei, eʻe, Na ’liʻi e o'oni mai nei, eʻe!

He ui, he nīnau

E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:

Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

Aia i ka hikina a ka lā

Puka i Haʻehaʻe

Aia i laila ka wai a Kāne.

E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:

Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

Aia i Kaulanakalā

I ka pae ʻōpua i ke kai

Ea mai ana ma Nihoa

Ma ka mole mai o Lehua

Aia i laila ka wai a Kāne.

E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:

Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

Aia i ke kuahiwi, i ke kualono

I ke awāwa, i ke kahawai

Aia i laila ka wai Kāne.

E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:

Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

Aia i kai, i ka moana

Track 10: The Hula Pa-Ipu Track 10: The Hula Pa-Ipu

Pale II from Mele

The iwa flies heavy to nest in the brush, Its haunt on windy Keula.

The watch-bird, that fights off the rain from Lehua Bird sacred to Kuhai, the shark-god Shrieks, "Come to Leinoai, And will Unulau fiercely attack you."

Storm sweeps the cliffs of the islet; A thicket they seek beneath the hills, In the sheltered lee of the gale, The cove at the base of Lehua. The shady groves there enchant them, The scarlet plumes of lehua.

Love-dalliance now by the water-reeds, Until cooled and appeased by the rain-mist. Let it rain; the two heads press the pillow: Prince and princess stir in their sleep! from the Hula Pa-ipu

Track 11: He Mele no Kāne Track 11: He Mele no Kāne

A query, a question I put to you:

Where is the water of Kāne?

At the Eastern Gate

Where the sun comes in at Haʻehaʻe There is the water of Kāne.

A question, I ask of you:

Where is the water of Kāne? Out there at Kaulanakalā

In the clouds at sea, Rising at Nihoa,

This side of the base of Lehua, There is the water of Kāne.

One question I put to you:

Where is the water of Kāne?

Yonder on mountain peak, on the ridges, In the valleys, in the streams, There is the water of Kāne.

This is the question I ask of you: Where, pray, is the water of Kāne? Yonder, at sea, on the ocean

I ke Kualau, i ke ānuenue

I ka pūnohu, i ka uakoko

I ka ʻālewalewa

Aia i laila ka wai a Kāne.

E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:

Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

Aia i luna ka wai a Kāne

I ke ao ouli, i ke ao ʻeleʻele

I ke ao panopano

I ke ao pōpolohua mea a Kāne lā ē

Aia i laila ka wai a Kāne.

E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:

Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

Aia i lalo, i ka honua, i ka wai hū

I ka wai kau a Kāne me Kanaloa

He waipuna, he wai e inu

He wai e mana, he wai e ola

E ola nō! Ea!

In the driving rain, in the rainbow, In the smoke, in the blood-rain, In the ghost-pale cloud-form, There is the water of Kāne.

One question I put to you: Where, where is the water of Kāne? Up on high is the water of Kāne, In the heavenly blue, in the black piled cloud, In the black-black cloud, In the black-mottled sacred cloud of the gods, There is the water of Kāne.

One question I ask of you: Where flows the water of Kāne? Deep in the ground, in the gushing spring, In the ducts of Kāne and Kanaloa, A wellspring of water, water to drink

A water of magic power, the water of life! Long may it live! Life!

Auwē! pau au i ka manō nui, e! Lālākea niho pākolu.

Pau ka papakū o Lono

I ka ai ia e ka manō nui, O Niuhi maka ahi,

ʻŌlapa i ke kai lipo.

Ahu e! auwē!

A pua ka wiliwili, A nanahu ka manō,

Auwē! pau au i ka manō nui!

Kai uli, kai ʻele,

Kai pōpolohua o Kāne.

A leʻaleʻa au i kaʻ u hula,

Pau au i ka manō nui

Track 12: The Hula Manō Track 12: The Hula Manō

Alas! I am seized by the shark, great shark! Lalakea with triple-banked teeth. The stratum of Lono is gone, Torn up by the monster shark, Niuhi with fiery eyes, That flamed in the deep blue sea. Alas! and alas! When flowers the wiliwili tree, That is the time when the shark-god bites. Alas! I am seized by the huge shark! O blue sea, O dark sea, Foam-mottled sea of Kane! What pleasure I took in my dancing! Alas! now consumed by the monster shark!

The music of American composer Jeff Myers (b.1977) has been called “Striking…and harmonically rich” by the New York Times and “brilliant and powerful” by The Classical Voice of New England. He was hailed as a "gifted young composer" by New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini for the “engrossing” 2016 Fort Worth Opera staging of his opera Buried Alive.

Vocal music has been central to Myers’s output, from his operas with librettists Quincy Long (Buried Alive, The Embalmer’s Daughter) and Royce Vavrek (The Hunger Art, Maren of Vardø), to collaborations with American Lyric Theater, Beth Morrison Projects, Ekmeles, mezzos Rachel Calloway (Requiem aeternam, Islands of Death) and Anna Laurenzo (The Embalmer’s Daughter, Boy), as well as poet Jennifer de Guzman (Boy, Advice to a Migraineure). This album’s featured soprano, Rachel Schutz, has been a constant collaborator, having performed and premiered several songs over the years since they met while on faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Myers’ discography has been slowly growing over the last few years. His violin duo The Angry Birds of Kauai, commissioned by Hilary Hahn, appears on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores and is published by Boosey & Hawkes. His debut album Requiem, with mezzo Rachel Calloway and JACK Quartet, was released on Innova Recordings in 2024, followed by his electronic album Goodnight on Neuma Records in 2025. Other works have appeared on albums by Miolina, Yang Jing, Laura Klock, and Music in the American Wild.

His music has been performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Disney Concert Hall, Library of Congress, Darmstadt, festivals such as Tanglewood, Aspen, Acanthes, and Gaudeamus, and he has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fromm Foundation, BMI, ASCAP and others.

A student of grammy winning composers William Bolcom and Michael Daugherty, Myers holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. He lives in New York City, where he works as a freelance composer and music engraver.