When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (2019)

Perusal Score

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General Information

Text: When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman (1867)
Commissioner: Mack Rodgers
Written: February 2019
Duration: ca. 3’
Instrumentation: baritone + pf
note: also available in a transposed version for tenor + pf

Performance History

Text

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

April 26, 2019: Mack Rodgers (baritone) and Mac Merchant (piano) at Grusin Hall, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO (World Premiere)
May 28, 2019: Benjamin Beckman (baritone) and Sara Shakliyan (piano) at Rugby Theater, Los Angeles, CA
April 17, 2022: Nikhil Harle (tenor) and Benjamin Beckman (piano) at Pierson College, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Program Note

I wrote this setting of Whitman's gorgeous poem specifically on request from Mack Rodgers, an incredible baritone and an old friend, for a recital of his at the University of Colorado Boulder. The music came to me incredibly easily - the poem just translated itself. I am constantly struck by the sublime nature of both its language and its message. I hold many dear memories of stargazing; the wondrous, mystical aspect of simply looking up at the heavens at night continues to capture my imagination and creativity.

Musically, I was much inspired by Kaija Saariaho's vocal writing in her opera L'Amour de Loin, and Samuel Barber's structure and language in his art song Sure On This Shining Night. This work is my first song for lower voice, and it was an interesting challenge to work with a lower register's melodic abilities.