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Hard Songs
2016
soprano
cimbalom
duration 35'
first performance:
Ludovico Ensemble: Jennifer Ashe and Nicholas Tolle
Wayland Little Theatre Concerts / December 2, 2016
SCORE
PART • Cimbalom
VIDEO
Ludovico Ensemble
PROGRAM NOTE
Hard Songs sets 23 short, pithy, hard-edged poems by Stephen Crane, the 19th-century writer most known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage. These poems are quite different in tone from his novels; odd and relentlessly bleak, written in free verse and mostly without stanzas, Crane referred to them as his 'lines'.
After a Prologue, Hard Songs unfolds in eight continuous sections. Each has a short textless introductory movement and the individual poems are separated by musical 'bullet-points'; usually a single burst of sound surrounded by silence.
Crane's poems keep returning to the same concerns; singing, birds, and mouths; deserts and barren landscapes; skies, visions of hell, and the apocalypse; lies, the earth, and the sea. Similarly the music of Hard Songs keeps digging back into a very compressed set of ideas that reappear relentlessly throughout the cimbalom part as broken chords, repeated patterns, or punctuating stabs. In this spirit, three of the poems themselves also return as reset fragments that close each of the last three sections of the work as it moves to an unresolved conclusion full of unsettled disquiet.
TEXTS
Three Little Birds
Three little birds in a row
Sat musing.
A woman passed near that place.
Then did the little birds nudge each other.
They said, "She thinks she can sing."
They threw back their heads to laugh.
With quaint countenances
They regarded her.
They were very curious,
Those three little birds in a row.
Because it is Bitter
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting upon the ground,
Held her heart in her hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter bitter," she answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
Dead in my Mouth
Yes, I have a thousand tongues,
And nine and ninety-nine lie.
Though I strive to use the one,
It will make no melody at my will,
But is dead in my mouth.
The Wind that Waves the Blossoms
The wind that waves the blossoms sang, sang, sang from age to age.
The flowers were made curious by this joy.
"Oh, wind," they said, "why sing you at your labor, while we,
pink beneficiaries, sing not, but idle, idle, idle from age to age?"
•
When I Gazed All Was lLost
There was, before me,
Mile upon mile
Of snow, ice, burning sand.
And yet I could look beyond all this,
To a place of infinite beauty;
And I could see the loveliness of he
Who walked in the shade of the trees.
When I gazed,
All was lost
But this place of beauty and him.
When I gazed,
And in my gazing, desired,
Then came again
Mile upon mile,
Of snow, ice, burning sand.
He is in a Place of Blackness
Places among the stars,
Soft gardens near the sun,
Keep your distant beauty;
Shed no beams upon my weak heart.
Since he is here
In a place of blackness,
Not your golden days
Nor your silver nights
Can call me to you.
Since he is here
In a place of blackness,
Here I stay and wait
Carousing in Sin
I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
and carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, "Comrade! Brother!"
Dead in Heaven
God lay dead in heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.
But of all sadness this was sad
A woman's arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast.
Clip-Clapper
There was a woman with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the woman
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.
•
It is Futile
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never"
"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.
The Chatter
The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top
Blood– blood and torn grass–
Had marked the rise of his agony
This lone hunter.
The grey-green woods impassive
Had watched the threshing of his limbs.
A canoe with flashing paddle,
A girl with soft searching eyes,
A call: 'John!'
. . . . . . . .
Come, arise, hunter!
Can you not hear?
•
Poor Soul
There was one I met upon the road
Who looked at me with kind eyes.
He said, "Show me of your wares."
And this I did,
Holding forth one.
He said, "It is a sin."
Then held I forth another;
He said, "It is a sin."
Then held I forth another;
He said, "It is a sin."
And so to the end;
Always he said, "It is a sin."
And, finally, I cried out,
"But I have none other."
Then did he look at me
With kinder eyes.
"Poor soul!" he said.
Comrade
I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
and carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, "Comrade! Sister!"
•
The Strange Part
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it–
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
In Cool Green Hall
The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this–
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.
"Tell her this
And more–
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."
She Thinks she can Sing
Three little birds in a row . . .
A woman passed near . . .
Then did the little birds nudge each other.
They said, "She thinks she can sing."
They threw back their heads to laugh . . .
They were very curious . . .
•
It is No Desert
I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well, But–
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."
A Call
The chatter of a death-demon . . .
Blood – blood and torn grass –
. . . The grey-green woods impassive . . .
A canoe . . .
A girl . . .
A call: 'John!'
. . . . . . . .
•
Whisperings
There came whisperings in the winds:
"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
Little voices called in the darkness:
"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
Then I stretched forth my arms.
"No– no– "
There came whisperings in the wind
"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
Little voices called in the darkness:
"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
Birds of the Night
Little birds of the night
Aye, they have much to tell
Perching there in rows
Blinking at me with their serious eyes
Recounting of flowers they have seen and loved
Of meadows and groves of the distance
And pale sands at the foot of the sea
And breezes that fly in the leaves.
They are vast in experience
These little birds that come in the night
•
Red Devils
Many red devils ran from my heart
And out upon the page,
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart.
A Song All of Birds
Once, I knew a fine song,
–It is true, believe me–
It was all of birds,
And I held them in a basket;
When I opened the wicket,
Heavens! They all flew away.
I cried, "Come back, little thoughts!"
But they only laughed.
They flew on
Until they were as sand
Thrown between me and the sky.
Blinking
Little birds of the night
. . . Perching there in rows
Blinking at me with their serious eyes
. . . These little birds that come in the night
Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
pronouns have been changed in some poems