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3 Songs |
The poetry of E. E. Cummings has been a lifelong obsession with me. His huge output expresses a vast range of experience and emotional insight with hardly any use of the first person singular. This universality provides wonderful imagery for musical setting, the present work being among many of my own.
1. these children seems to recall the Cantoria of Donatello: ‘these children singing in stone…..wound with stone flowers opening forever…'. I have used the melody of the chanson l'Homme armé as a ‘ghost' for the imagery reflected in the unceasing weaving and singing of the stone children.
2. This is the garden: Fleeting images of beauty through dark and light shadows are reflected by contrasting figurations in the music.
3. a wind has blown the rain away: This is a reflection on youthful love. The music attempts to characterise the impulsive contrasts of the poetry with muted textures.
E.R.