Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges: The Claremont Concert Choir & Claremont Treble Singers

Lullaby

In meinem Garten

Will there really be a morning?

Butterfly

Silent Noon

Jordan’s Angels

How Can I Keep From Singing

O primavera, gioventù de l’anno

Ave verum corpus

my love is building a building

The Pasture

When Music Sounds

Stein Song #3 A Sonatina (from “A Sonatina followed by Another”)
   Premiere choral performance

In meinem Garten

In meinem Garten die Nelken
mit ihrem Purpurstern
müssen nun alle verwelken,  
   denn du bist fern.

Auf meinem Herde die Flammen
die ich bewacht so gern,
sanken zu Asche zusammen,  
   denn du bist fern.

Die Welt ist mir verdorben,
mich grüßt nicht Blume, nicht Stern,
mein Herz ist lange gestorben,  
   denn du bist fern.

-Emanuel von Geibel (1815-1884)

In my garden, the carnations
with their crimson center-star
must all wilt away now,  
   because you are afar.

In my hearth, the flames
That I so loved to watch,
crumbled together to ashes,  
   because you are afar.

The world became corrupted,
with neither flower nor star greeting me,
my heart died away long ago,  
   because you are afar.


Will there really be a morning?

Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!

-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)


Butterfly

All still, no life to be seen,
Motionless,
Time hangs in the air.

Inside, a tiny movement slowly opening,
Carefully unwrapping;
Gently, gently;
Feeling the sun, feeling the warmth;
Opening, opening,
Frail wing uncrumpling to the light,
Leg like a crooked eyelash,
Antenna exploring:
Wet wings growing,
Shaking and spreading to the light;
Full wings, turn this way, turn that way.

Open, open…
Slow motion takeoff…

Then fly, fly!
Soar through the air!
Flash of colour, butteryfly.
Flitter, flutter, flit, flirt.
Swoop past wild flowers, humming insects,
Just a glimmer of light
Now here, now there,
Come and gone again.

Then fly, fly!
Flitter, flutter, flit, flirt.
Butterfly, fly high!


Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass—
  The fingerpoints look through like rosy blooms:
  Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass
  Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge,
  Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
‘Tis visible silence, still as the hourglass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfl
Hangs like a blue thread loosen’d from the sky:—
  So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above,
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dow’r,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour,
  When twofold silence was the song of love.

-Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)


Jordan’s Angels

Lookin’ out over Jordan, all I could see:
A band of angels comin’ after me.
Gabriel was playin’ the trumpet, David was playin’ the harp.
Someday my soul shall be free.
All night and all day,
The angels keep a-watchin’ over me, my Lord.


How can I keep from singing?

My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, though far off hymn
That hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear that music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth,
What though the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble when they hear
The bells of freedom ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?

-Anon. (vss. 1-2) and Doris Plenn (vs. 3)

O primavera

O primavera, gioventù de l’anno,
bella madre de’ fiori,
d’erbe novelle e di novelli amori,
tu ben, lasso, ritorni
ma senza i cari giorni
de le speranze mie.
Tu ben sei quella
ch’eri pur dianzi, sì vezzosa e bella;
ma non son io quel che già un tempo fui,
sì caro a gli occhi altrui.

-Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538-1612)

O Spring, youth of the year,
lovely mother of the flowers,
of new pastures and new loves,
you, alas, certainly return,
but without the precious days
of my hopes.
You are still the one
you were before, so charming and beautiful;
but I am not that which I once was,
so dear in the eyes of others.

-Marino Forlino, translation


Ave verum corpus

Ave verum corpus,
Natum de Maria virgine;
Vere passum immolatum
In crucis pro homine.
Cujus latus perforatum
Unda fluxit sanguine.
Esto nobis praegustatum
In mortis examine.
O dulcis, o pie,
O Jesu Fili Mariae,
Miserere mei. Amen.

-early 1200s

Hail, true body,
Born of the virgin Mary;
Who has truly suffered, sacrificed
On the cross for humanity.
Whose side was pierced
From which flowed blood.
Be for us a foretaste of heaven
During our final reckoning.
O sweet, o pure,
O Jesus, Son of Mary,
Have mercy on me. Amen


my love is building a building

my love is building a building
   around you,a frail slippery
   house,a strong fragile house
   (beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
   prison, a precise clumsy
   prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
   Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
   tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
   He’ll not my tower,
                        laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
                                hangs
                                         breathless

-e. e. cummings (1894-1962)


The Pasture

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

-Robert Frost (1874-1963)


When Music Sounds

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
And from Time’s woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

-Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)


A Sonatina

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was a pioneering modernist in American literature who endeavored to create in literature the same objectification and immediacy of thought that her friend Picasso had created in his Cubist paintings. At times she went even further, making language into a fascinating abstraction, which has long appealed to me as a composer, as has her musical perspective of language, her use of repetition, and the seeming simplicity of her supposed "difficult" works. This text comes from a very long poem, “A Sonatina Followed by Another,” which she wrote in Vence, France in 1921. According to her friend and collaborator Virgil Thomson, the title refers to her habit of improvising “sonatinas” on the white keys of the piano, though she had no musical training whatever. Although the poem is filled with charming though fleeting images of her stay in southern France, I have extracted lullaby-like bits of the text that often seem to refer to her life partner, Alice Toklas.

-Bill Alves