music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings Haunted 1997 vocal quartet (SATB)  piano duration 12' commissioned by The Cantata Singers Recital Series first performance: The Cantata Singers Recital Series: Kayo Iwama, piano Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum / April 13, 1997 SCORE Letter to Louise and Fannie Norcross There Came a Wind Like a Bugle One Need not be a Chamber to be Haunted I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind I Started Early—Took my Dog PROGRAM NOTE There seem to be as many Emily Dickinsons as there are critics and biographers of her life and work. She is, indeed, odd and elusive. One perspective, explored here, is that behind the settled appearance of her day-to-day life unrealized passions, intensely focused intellectual discernment, and nightmarish mental states churn wildly and, mirroring this, the telegraphic, elliptical surface of the poems rides on top of dark psychological complexities. My sense of Dickinson is of a woman suddenly be gripped by 'transports'–either rapturous or terrifying–who trod a narrow line between the real and the imagined which wavered, disappeared and reappeared at whim. Haunted sets four poems and part of a letter which deal with some of her more alarming or disquieting images. These range from the mysterious and unfailingly strange letter to her nieces; through poems of great violence—external, in There Came A Wind Like A Bugle, internal, in I Felt A Cleaving In My Mind; to One Need Not Be A Chamber To Be Haunted—an interior ghost story which hints at schizophrenia, at doppelgängers and the hidden capriciousness of the psyche; and to her being engulfed, in I Started Early—Took My Dog, by seawater as it rises higher and higher over her formal clothing until she is almost devoured, lost, and suddenly pulled back to reality. As befits such texts much of the music is harsh and roughhewn but, as it seems to me with her life, there is a strange, quiet, slightly sinister hum coming from out of the frame which on occasion claims the foreground. REVIEW But Vores's two works had the most to offer. Vores, fresh from a critical triumph with the Cantata Singers' premiere of World Wheel, provided another premiere—his Welsh Songs—and a work for chamber chorus after Emily Dickinson, Haunted. . . the Dickinson songs were mindscapes, polymorphic and often fractured settings of her darker poetry, and Vores colorations always supported the text without distorting it. Michael Manning • The Boston Globe TEXTS Letter to Louise and Fannie Norcross Sisters,— I hear robins a great way off, and wagons a great way off, and rivers a great way off, and all appear to be hurrying somewhere undisclosed to me. Remoteness is the founder of sweetness; could we see all we hope, or hear the whole we fear told tranquil, like another tale, there would be madness near. . . It is not recorded of any rose that it failed of its bee, though obtained in specific instances through scarlet experience. The career of flowers differs from ours only in inaudibleness. I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures whose suspense or transport may surpass my own.  There Came a Wind Like a Bugle There came a Wind like a Bugle—  It quivered through the Grass And a Green Chill upon the Heat So ominous did pass We barred the Windows and the Doors As from an Emerald Ghost—  The Doom’s electric Moccasin That very instant passed—  On a strange Mob of panting Trees And Fences fled away And Rivers where the Houses ran Those looked that lived— that Day—  The Bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings told—  How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the World!  One Need not be a Chamber to be Haunted One need not be a Chamber— to be Haunted—  One need not be a House—  The Brain— has Corridors surpassing  Material Place—  Far safer of a Midnight— Meeting External Ghost—  Than an Interior— Confronting—  That Cooler Host  Far safer through an Abbey— gallop—  The Stones a’chase—  Than Moonless— One’s A’ self encounter—  In lonesome Place—  Ourself— behind Ourself— Concealed—  Should startle— most—  Assassin— hid in our Apartment—  Be Horror’s least—  The Prudent— carries a Revolver—  He bolts the Door—  O’erlooking a Superior Spectre—  More near—  I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind I felt a Cleaving in my Mind  As if my Brain had split—  I tried to match it— Seam by Seam—  But could not make them fit.  The thought behind, I strove to join Unto the thought before—  But Sequence ravelled out of Sound Like Balls— upon a Floor.  I Started Early, Took my Dog I started Early— Took my Dog—  And visited the Sea—  The Mermaids in the Basement Came out to look at me—  And Frigates— in the Upper Floor Extended Hempen Hands—  Presuming Me to be a Mouse—  Aground— upon the Sands—  But no Man moved Me— till the Tide Went past my simple Shoe—  And past my Apron— and my Belt—  And past my Bodice— too—  And made as He would eat me up—  As wholly as a Dew Upon a Dandelion´s Sleeve—  And then— I started— too—  And He— He followed— close behind—  I felt his Silver Heel Upon my Ankle— Then my Shoes Would overflow with Pearl—  Until We met the Solid Town—  No One He seemed to know—  And Bowing— with a Mighty look—  At me— The Sea withdrew—  Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)