Paterson WINTER SONGS (FS VOCAL-PIANO-Perusal)

Robert Paterson

SONGS

WINTER SONGS

Program Notes (Short Version — For Programs)

The idea for Winter Songs occurred to me after I wrote a short song based on the sixth poem from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens for a group composition project at Cornell University. The original idea was to have each student set a different poem in this work, culminating in an evening long song cycle. There are many compelling settings of Thirteen Ways, so instead of trying to contribute yet another, I decided to compose a song cycle using winter-themed poems by a variety of poets. David Neal, the bass-baritone who sang my initial song, Icicles Filled the Long Window, liked the idea so much that he asked me for a complete cycle. I spent months collecting and reading as many poems about winter as I could find. Winter-themed poems seem to fall into two categories: those that are playful and fun, and those that are quite serious. I chose to set six serious poems, including another by Wallace Stevens, and one each by Robert Creeley, Richard Wilbur, A. R. Ammons and Billy Collins.

Winter Songs was commissioned by David Neal and the Arts at Grace series through the New York State Music Fund and was premiered by David Neal and the Society for New Music in April 2008.

Program Notes (Long Version)

The idea for Winter Songs occurred to me after I wrote a short song based on the sixth poem from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens for a group composition project at Cornell University. The original idea was to have each student set a different poem in this work, culminating in an evening long song cycle. There are many compelling settings of Thirteen Ways, so instead of trying to contribute yet another, I decided to compose a song cycle using winter-themed poems by a variety of poets. David Neal, the bass-baritone who sang my initial song, Icicles Filled the Long Window, liked the idea so much that he asked me for a complete cycle. I spent months collecting and reading as many poems about winter as I could find. Winter-themed poems seem to fall into two distinct categories: those that are playful and fun, and those that are quite serious. I chose to set six serious poems, including another by Wallace Stevens, and one each by Robert Creeley, Richard Wilbur, A. R. Ammons and Billy Collins.

As I studied the poems, I tried finding ways to connect them, either by subject or theme—all poems about snow and ice or death and loss, for example—or by something frivolous, such as poets with the first name of Robert: Frost, Pack, Bly, Creeley and Hayden. I also considered interspersing funny poems inbetween serious ones, but that seemed to break the flow. Ultimately, I decided to set poems by contemporary writers that resonated most strongly with me; emotional quality and listener comprehension—whether a poem would be understood when set to music—became more important than subject matter. By coincidence, these poems are all by poets having ties to the American Northeast. Perhaps my growing up in snowy Buffalo, NY made me feel these particular poems more than the others I read.

Winter Songs was commissioned by David Neal and the Arts at Grace series through the New York State Music Fund and was premiered by David Neal and the Society for New Music in April 2008.

Duration: ca. 20’00”

Winter Songs is also available in a version for bass-baritone and instrumental sextet.

Explanation of Notation

General

( – long fermata & – short fermata

, – brief pause

, – very brief pause

n – niente

/ – subito (when placed before a dynamic, i.e. / f )

´ – short staccato (staccatissimo)

^ – hard accent

Ÿ~ – indicates regular trills (a whole step or smaller) and wide trills (i.e. “trill tremolos”)

– bend note downward

I – Let note ring/vibrate indefinitely until the sound dies out naturally—do not dampen

( ) – All markings in parenthesis are courtesy/cautionary markings.

• All grace notes (including beamed grace notes with slashes) are to be played immediately before the beat they proceed. They are to be played very close to the beat and as fast as possible.

• All accidentals last for the entire measure, unless they are canceled out by another accidental (such as a natural sign). Accidentals only apply to the line or space they are on.

I. Icicles filled the long window from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a

, from

Texts

Blackbird

The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, Copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

II. Dark Day, Warm and Windy

A. R. Ammons

Dark day, warm and windy, light breaking through clouds coloring the sides of tall furrows, thaw decaying snow, the wind stirring time up to a rush, I come home from work midmorning dark with contemplations, that the infant finds his hand unopened and the old man forgets his has closed—that rondure: I sit down at the piano and try the “Fuga I” in The Well-Tempered Clavier and my feelings lighten, the melody so incredible, the counter-melody incredible, the workings in and out precise and necessary

III. The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Snow Man, from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, Copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

IV. Boy at the Window

Richard Wilbur

Seeing the snowman standing all alone

In dusk and cold is more than he can bear. The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare A night of gnashings and enormous moan. His tearful sight can hardly reach to where The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes Returns him such a god-forsaken stare As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content, Having no wish to go inside and die. Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry. Though frozen water is his element, He melts enough to drop from one soft eye

A trickle of the purest rain, a tear

For the child at the bright pane surrounded by Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

V. Old Story

Robert Creeley

Like kid on float of ice block sinking in pond the field had made from winter’s melting snow so wisdom accumulated to disintegrate in conduits of brain in neural circuits faded

while gloomy muscles shrank mind padded the paths its thought had wrought its habits had created

till like kid afloat on ice block broken on or inside the thing it stood or was forsaken.

Neither Snow Billy Collins

When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow, the distinguishable flakes blowing sideways, looked like krill fleeing the maw of an advancing whale.

At least they looked that way to me from the taxi window, and since I happened to be sitting that fading Sunday afternoon in the very center of the universe, who was in a better position to say what looked like what, which thing resembled some other?

Yes, it was a run of white plankton borne down the Avenue of the Americas in the stream of the wind, phosphorescent against the weighty buildings.

Which made the taxi itself, yellow and slow-moving, a kind of undersea creature, I thought as I wiped the fog from the glass,

and me one of its protruding eyes, an eye on a stem swiveling this way and that monitoring one side of its world, observing tons of water tons of people colored signs and lights and now a wildly blowing race of snow.

Duration: ca. 20'00"

Piano/vocal Version Commissioned by David Neal

WINTER SONGS

Text by Wallace Stevens

I. Icicles Filled the Long Window

Music by Robert Paterson (2008/2018)

Text by A.R. Ammons

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Music by Robert Paterson

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Optional:

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by Wallace Stevens

III. The Snow Man

by Robert Paterson

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dolce, slightly blurry, like distant chimes

Text

Music

Tobeholdthejunipersshaggedwith

Text by Richard Wilbur Music by Robert Paterson PerusalScore

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Text by Robert Creeley

V. The Old Story

Music by Robert Paterson

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Text by Billy Collins

VI. Neither Snow

Music by Robert Paterson

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Finished: April9,2008,NewYork,NYUSA

Minor Corrections & Revisions: May,2008,NewYork,NY,USA Piano/vocal Version: August,2018,NewYork,NY,USA

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