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Uncertainty is Beautiful

PROGRAM NOTE
Uncertainty Is Beautiful sets three texts about relationships. The first and third, by Mary Oliver, are in the first person. West Wind 2, the first song, is an admonition to embrace passion. West Wind 1, the final song, is an anticipation of continued togetherness. The middle text, Love At First Sight, by Wislawa Szymborska, is far cooler. In the third person, it speculates on the unseen connections and coincidences behind the eventual—and apparently spontaneous—spark between two people. 

Two miniature instrumental movements lie between these first two songs. Each presents a very different sound, as if delineating two quite different personalities. Shard is 30 seconds of squeaky, 
fluttering woodwinds, March is 20 seconds of rushed and four-square music. Three small movements are, similarly, interspersed between the second and third songs. Two of these superimpose the shard music on top of the march music, the march becoming slower each time it’s heard. Sandwiched between these two forced cohabitations is a movement entitled Duo; a gentle, although cool, playoff between the soprano and a solo oboe. 

My aim in this piece was to balance the everyday with the everyday-extraordinary, the expected with the unexpected, the agreeable with the uncomfortable. There are many musical connections (two, of many, examples; the harmonic progression of the first half of West Wind 2 is identical to the harmonic progression of the first half of West Wind 1; the pizzicati at the end of the work are foreshadowed in all of the instrumental sections), but there are also many deliberate clashes. Nevertheless, I hope the overall feeling is one of connectedness; that is the subject matter of this piece. 


REVIEWS
Vores is the most compelling of the generation of Boston-based composers after John Harbison, and he’s a striking text setter. The concert led off with the premiere of his Uncertainty Is Beautiful—a pungent, impassioned cycle about love that gave even Mary Oliver’s gushy, sentimental prose poems some bite, though the high point was the central section, a shimmering setting of Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska’s ironic and haunting poem refusing to accept the notion of "Love at First Sight". The vocal sections are punctuated by short orchestral movements, dissonant Marches and glinting "Shards," with their undercurrent of pizzicati, and a one-word ("Ah") Duo. Soprano Kendra Colton was at her very best, dedicating her radiant voice to the performance.
Lloyd Schwartz • The Boston Phoenix

•
The world premiere last night was Andy Vores's Uncertainty Is Beautiful, a setting of passionate and direct love poems by Mary Oliver and Wislawa Szymborska. Vores's elegantly fashioned music is passionate and dodgy, which adds a layer of complexity. 
Richard Dyer • The Boston Globe 


TEXTS
West Wind 2
You are young. So you know everything. You leap 
into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. 
Without fanfare, without embarassment, without any 
doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the 
oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart,
and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. There is 
life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a 
scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine 
days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out 
of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and 
roil, fretting around the sharp rocks—when you hear 
that unmistakable pounding—when you feel the mist on 
your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long 
falls plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life 
toward it. 
Mary Oliver (b.1935) 


Love at First Sight
They're both convinced 
that a sudden passion joined them. 
Such certainty is beautiful, 
but uncertainty is more beautiful still. 

Since they'd never met before, they're sure 
that there'd been nothing between them. 
But what's the word from the streets, staircases, 
hallways— 
perhaps they've passed by each other a million times? 

I want to ask them 
if they don't remember— 
a moment face to face 
in some revolving door? 
perhaps a "sorry" muttered in a crowd? 
a curt "wrong number" caught in the receiver? 
but I know the answer. 
No, they don't remember. 

They'd be amazed to hear 
that Chance has been toying with them 
now for years. 

Not quite ready yet 
to become their Destiny, 
it pushed them close, drove them apart, 
it barred their path, 
stifling a laugh, 
and then leaped aside. 

There were signs and signals, 
even if they couldn't read them yet. 
Perhaps three years ago 
or just last Tuesday 
a certain leaf fluttered 
from one shoulder to another? 
Something was dropped and then picked up. 
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished 
into childhood's thicket? 

There were doorknobs and doorbells 
where one touch had covered another 
beforehand. 

Suitcases checked and standing side by side. 
One night, perhaps, the same dream, 
grown hazy by morning. 

Every beginning 
is only a sequel, after all, 
and the book of events 
is always open halfway through. 
Wislawa Szymborska (b.1923) trans. Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak 


West Wind 1
If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? 
Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not 
together. Imagine! Two little stones, two fleas under the 
wing of a gull, flying along through the fog! Or, ten blades 
of grass. Ten loops of honeysuckle, all flung against each 
other, at the edge of Race Road! Beach plums! Snowflakes, 
coasting into the winter woods, making a very small sound, 
like this

     sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 

as they marry the dusty bodies of the pitch-pines. Or rain—
that gray light running over the sea, pocking it, lacquering 
it, coming, all morning and afternoon, from the west wind’s 
youth and abundance and jollity—pinging and jangling 
down upon the roofs of Provincetown. 
Mary Oliver (b.1935)