Hartley Songs (2022)
Perusal Score
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Text
I. Confidence
"We'll have the sun now,"
the quaking sea gulls said
"We've run the gamut of the thundering sea,
one by one one by one,
and though the wave is full of bread
a wing is often tendon-weary
of a thing so varied-vast;
we do our geodetic surveillance,
for herring are a shining thing,
a shape of sleek imagining,
a pretty circumstance.
The shiver of an ash leaf and of pine
makes other music for a day's determining,
even sea gulls love the shape of roses
ere day closes."
II. Salutations to a Mouse
If a mouse makes a nest
Of one's written words,
Is there else to do but accept
The flattery?
I have deemed it wise to do so.
I have thanked him
Sufficiently
As he scurried in and out
Of the room.
He has faced the winter
With a nest of my words.
I did not suspect them
Of such worth against the cold.
III. Fishmonger
I have taken scales from off
The cheeks of the moon.
I have made fins from bluejays’ wings,
I have made eyes from damsons in the shadow.
I have taken flushes from the peachlips in the sun.
From all these I have made a fish of heaven for you, Set it swimming on a young October sky.
I sit on the bank of the stream and watch
The grasses in amazement
As they turn to ashy gold.
Are the fishes from the rainbow
Still beautiful to you,
For whom they are made,
For whom I have set them,
Swimming?
Marsden Hartley's poetry is in the public domain and is reproduced here without the requirement of permissions.
General Information
Movements:
I. Confidence
II. Salutations to a Mouse
III. Fishmonger
Text: Selected poetry by Marsden Hartley
Commissioner: Commissioned by Lena Goldstein
Written: June – August, 2022
Duration: ca. 5.5’
Instrumentation: 2.0.2.0, 0.0.0.0, soprano solo, 2.2.2.2.0 (alternate version: soprano + pf)
Performance History
February 2, 2023: Lena Goldstein with the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, Yale University, New Haven, CT (World Premiere – Orchestral Version)
February 14, 2023: Lena Goldstein with Benjamin Beckman, Yale Saybrook College Mellon Forum, New Haven, CT (Premiere – Piano Version)
May 20, 2023: Lena Goldstein in recital with Benjamin Beckman, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Program Note
I first read Marsden Hartley's poem Fishmonger four years before the composition of this work. When Lena Goldstein asked me to write a song cycle for her senior recital at Yale University, I immediately thought of the poem, which I had been wanting to set for years, but had never had the chance; after reading almost all of Hartley's (rather limited) poetic output, I settled on three poems centered around animal imagery.
In Confidence, the singer is inside the mind of a seagull. I assume that seagulls are not necessarily the most logically straightforward of creatures, and so I chose to set the poem with two rapidly-alternating musical characters. The first is inspired by the awkwardness and clumsiness of seagulls hopping along the ground, and the second by their delicate grace as they soar over the sea.
The opening of Salutations to a Mouse begins to quote the fifth movement of Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb ("For the mouse is a creature of great personal valour") before immediately darkening: this song is not about a mouse, but about the honor, pride and gratification that someone's appreciation of an artist's work brings to the artist themself - though in this poem, 'appreciation of work' is the mouse's literal usage of the speaker's papers to insulate against winter's cold. To me, this poem is deeply touching, a commentary on how the smallest of actions can do so much good for another living being.
I find Fishmonger remarkable for its striking poetic allegory that compares what we do for our loved ones to the effort of God's creation of the world. The heartbreaking sense of long in the poem's final lines was what drew me to Hartley's oeuvre in the first place, the choice of words so intrinsically musical that it was an almost afterthought to actually set. The implied divine character and almost religious air to the poem was so moving as to inspire the creation of this entire cycle.
In each poem, I was drawn to the lyricism of the language and an almost-theatrical presence of the narrator, which deeply informed my setting, and, I hope, will inform a singer's performance. Each song in the cycle may be excerpted performed as a stand-alone piece.