| The song cycle A HEARTLAND PORTRAIT for
Baritone and Piano was commissioned by Linda and Jack Hoeschler to
celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary and for baritone, Thomas
Hampson who premiered it with Wolfram Rieger on January 17, 2006.
The premiere was given at the Ordway Music Theatre on a Schubert
Club International Artists Series program. At that time only four
songs existed - numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5. Time didn't permit my
completing the entire cycle in time for the Schubert Club premiere
so Thomas Hampson sang those four songs. I explained that I had
planned on adding three more. The day after the premiere Tom called
me and said that he thought the cycle needed only one more song to
really be complete. So I set one more poem - "Porch Swing in
September." It seemed to fit in the #4 slot and the original #4 then
became #5, thereby retaining the closing position in the cycle. Ted Kooser, the poet for this cycle, is the recent Poet Laureate from the U.S. He lives in Nebraska and I found his wonderful poems to be both straightforward in that "midwestern" way and also quite dark and layered with various meanings. In the first song "Flying at Night" is tried to retain some mystery by using oscillating tritone figures with fast-moving runs interlaced. The second song - "At Midnight" ventures into more agitation with alternating octaves and staccato chords. The mixed meter keeps things off balance. "An August Night" - #3, opens with a high, lyrical melody that descends slowly in a seductive fashion. There is a slight bluesy reference in a couple of spots. "Porch Swing in September" (#4) is a complete contrast with rollicking octaves and chords that attempt to word paint, quite literally, the movement of the porch swing. The last song, "A Summer Night" is flavored with chords that suggest nostalgia, a backward glance or reflective look. Throughout the cycle I have tried to make the words audible and highlighted. The accompaniment can at times be surging and ecstatic, but at other times it is very spare. I hope that I have added a musical dimension to the meaning behind the words by making the listener pause to analyze the thoughts and images that the singer and pianist are projecting. Hopefully, all of this may cause us to reflect on "how simple, how perfect it seems." --Stephen Paulus
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| poems by Ted Kooser
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| Flying at Night Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer snaps on his yardlight, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his. |
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| At Midnight Somewhere in the night, somewhere in the night a dog is barking. Somewhere in the night a dog is barking, starlight like beads of dew a long his tight chain. No one is there beyond the dark garden, nothing to bark at, nothing to bark at except the thoughts of some old man sending his memories out for a midnight walk, a rich cape woven of many loves swept recklessly about his shoulders. Somewhere in the night, Somewhere in the night, Somewhere in the night a dog is barking. No one is there, no one is there except the thoughts and memories of many loves, many loves, many loves, of many loves, many- |
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| An August Night High in the trees, cicadas weave a wickerwork of longing, longing. In the shadows between two houses, a man peers into a room through the hum of a window fan, the fragrance of his hair oil like distant music, far too faint like distant music, far too faint to awaken, to awaken the naked girl on the clean linen of moonlight. High in the trees cicadas weave a wickerwork of longing, longing, longing. |
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| Porch Swing In September The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion whose flowers have faded, like those of summer, and a small brown spider has hung out her web on a line between porch post and chain so that no one may swing without breaking it. She is saying it's time that the swinging were done with, time that the creaking and pinging and popping that sang through the ceiling were past, time now for the soft vibrations of moths, the wasp tapping each board for an entrance, the cool dewdrops to brush from her work every morning, one world at a time. |
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| A Summer Night At the end of the street a porch light is burning, showing the way. How simple, how perfect it seems: How simple. how perfect it seems: the darkness the white house like a passage through summer and into a snowfield. Night after night, the lamp comes on, comes on at dusk, the end of the street stands open and white, an old woman sits there tending the lonely gate. How simple, how perfect it seems. |
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| Poems for A Heartland Portrait used
by permission of Ted Kooser and the University of Pittsburgh Press
from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 (c) 2005 by Ted Kooser
University of Pittsburgh Press. |
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