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Two Stevens Songs
1982

voice
piano

SCORE
Life is Motion
Depression Before Spring

In 1982 I collected 32 songs, including these, to be performed individually or in sets as
Songbook 1. Most of the very earliest of these were virtually unperformable as originally
notated: unrealisticallly fast, vast vocal leaps, obsessive use of articulations and dynamic
swivels. As they appear here the most egregious naivities have been cleaned up, but I've
tried to maintain the spirit as intended. It was kind of sweet to see what the 25-year-old
me was doing to desperately try to appear 'modern' on the page, when my music has always
been, at heart, deeply triadic.

TEXTS
Life is Motion
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico,
Danced around a stump.
They cried,
“Ohoyaho,
Ohoo” . . .
Celebrating the marriage
Of flesh and air. 

Depression Before Spring
The cock crows
But no queen rises. T

he hair of my blonde
Is dazzling,
As the spittle of cows
threading the wind. 

Ho! Ho! 

But ki-ki-ri-ki
Brings no rou-cou,
No rou-cou-cou. 

But no queen comes
In slipper green. 

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)