Details

• Duration (min): 22
• Instrumentation: Soprano, Oboe/English Horn, Bass Clarinet/Clarinet, Percussion, Piano, Violin, Cello, Double Bass

Recordings

• Out of the Earth

Score Excerpts

• Out of the Earth score excerpt

Program Notes

This work is a setting of three texts from Native American sources. Each speaks in its own way of our relationship to nature. I was drawn to these texts not only for their inherent beauty but also because of my concern for our society’s loss of this relationship and of the devastating and possibly irreparable damage which we are doing to our home planet. These are however songs not of despair but of joy, singing and celebrating nature, and are one of the outcomes of a recent personal experience. During July of 1992 I had the good fortune to be involved in a CBC radio project which involved taking the train from Winnipeg to Churchill and writing music for a program commemorating Glenn Gould and his famous radio broadcast “The Idea of North”. This train trip and my experiences of the landscape of Churchill and northern Manitoba, especially time spent standing on the shore of Hudson Bay watching the ice breaking up, left me with a deep sense of how precious our wilderness is, and how crucial it is to our spiritual wholeness.

Out of the Earth was commissioned by Vancouver New Music Society with financial assistance from the Manitoba Arts Council. The world premier was given at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on March 21, 1993; the performers were:

Therese Costes, soprano
David Owen, oboe/English horn
Lori Freedman, bass clarinet/clarinet
Lauri Lyster, percussion
James Clapperton, piano
Victor Costanzi, violin
Susan Round, cello
David Brown, double bass
Owen Underhill, conductor

The titles of the individual movements should be listed in the program, and, if possible, the texts should be included in the program notes.

Rain Song (Papago)
Close to the west the great ocean is singing.
The waves are rolling toward me, covered with many clouds.
Even here I catch the sound.
The earth is shaking beneath me and I hear the deep rumbling.

I Sing for the Animals (Teton Sioux)
Out of the earth
I sing for them,
A Horse nation
I sing for them.
Out of the earth
I sing for them,
The animals
I sing for them.

The Song of the Stars (Algonquin)
We are the stars which sing,
We sing with our light;
We are the birds of fire,
We fly over the sky.
Our light is a voice;
We make a road for spirits,
For the spirits to pass over.
Among us are three hunters
Who chase a bear;
There never was a time
When they were not hunting.
We look down on the mountains.
This is the Song of the Stars.

Details

• Instrumentation: Soprano, Viola, Fortepiano

Details

• Duration (min): 8
• Instrumentation: Soprano and Cello

Program Notes

Songs of Travel is a setting of three poems by the Chinese poet Po Chü-i, who lived from 772 to 846. These translations are by Arthur Waley, and are taken from his book Translations from the Chinese, published in 1919. Most of the following remarks are paraphrased from Waley’s commentary to the poems.

One of the world’s great poets, Po Chü-i served as an imperial scholar and a political official; he was fortunate to have enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime. Arthur Waley says in describing his work: “The most striking characteristic of Po Chü-i’s poetry is its verbal simplicity. There is a story that he was in the habit of reading his poems to an old peasant woman and altering any expression which she could not understand. . . Like Confucius, he regarded art solely as a method of conveying instruction. . . He accordingly valued his didactic poems far above his other work; but it is obvious that much of his best poetry conveys no moral whatever. He admits, indeed, that among his ‘miscellaneous stanzas’ many were inspired by some momentary sensation or passing event. ‘A single laugh or a single sigh were rapidly translated into verse’.”

Chinese traditional poetry closely resembles traditional English verse; its lines have a fixed number of syllables and rhyme is obligatory. Waley decided not to use rhyme in his translations, so as not to “sacrifice sense to sound.” The poems which I have selected deal with aspects of the experience of travel; they are by turn joyful, cynical, reflective and sometimes melancholy in tone.

Songs of Travel was written for soprano Therese Costes and cellist George Meanwell during January and February of 1988; they gave the premier performance in Winnipeg on March 9, 1988, at the West End Cultural Centre.