John Corigliano

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Who is the light of old And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild AMERICAN CLASSICS As horses in the foam: Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined And druid herons’ vows The voyage to ruin I must run, Dawn ships clouted aground, Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue, JOHN CORIGLIANO Count my blessings aloud: Four elements and five A Dylan Thomas Trilogy Senses, and man a spirit in love Tangling through this spun slime To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come Sir Thomas Allen And the lost, moonshine domes, And the sea that hides his secret selves Ty Jackson • John Tessier Deep in its black base bones, Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh, Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus And this last blessing most, Leonard Slatkin That the closer I move To death, one man through his sundered hulks, The louder the sun blooms And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults; And every wave of the way And gale I tackle, the whole world then, With more triumphant faith Than ever was since the world was said, Spins its morning of praise,

I hear the bouncing hills Grow larked and greener at berry brown Fall and the dew larks sing Taller this thunderclap spring, and how More spanned with angels ride The mansouled fiery islands! Oh, C Holier then their eyes, And my shining men no more alone M As I sail out to die.

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John Corigliano (b.1938) In a cavernous, swung A Dylan Thomas Trilogy Wave’s silence, wept white angelus knells. Thirty-five bells sing struck Ordinarily, when composing a piece, first I plan its shape. image of a life-death force, appeared only in the poem’s On skull and scar where his loves lie wrecked But I’d already completed half of A Dylan Thomas Trilogy last line, “though I sang in my chains like the sea”. Poem Steered by the falling stars. before I realized what it should be – a memory play in the in October begins in Thomas’s seafront town: the poet, And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage form of an oratorio – and it was only forty years after I first marking his birthday, climbs to a high hill, where he Terror will rage apart encountered Thomas’s poetry that I completed it. It has reflects on his youth and mulls his future. Now the Before chains break to a hammer flame been a long and serendipitous journey. Thomas’s poems narrating voice was a tenor, bereft of the support of a And love unbolts the dark have reappeared in my life precisely when they have felt chorus, and enmeshed in the introspective, acerbic textures most autobiographical, and just when I needed to write of flute, oboe, clarinet, string quartet and harpsichord. And And freely he goes lost exactly the music they have evoked. the cradling regular meters, the reassuring tonal imagery In the unknown, famous light of great And fabulous, dear God. I first encountered Dylan Thomas’s work in 1959, my of Fern Hill yielded to spontaneously inflected rhythms Dark is a way and light is a place, last undergraduate year at Columbia College. It was a and to harmony that stretched outside my earlier tonal Heaven that never was revelation. Both the sound and structures of Thomas’s palette. Nor will be ever is always true, words were astonishingly musical. Not by accident, either: Five more years passed. Yet 1975 found me as And, in that brambled void, “What the words meant was of secondary importance; disappointed with my life as with my previous musical Plenty as blackberries in the woods what matters was the sound of them … these words were thinking. I was questioning both the way I composed (why The dead grow for His joy. as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments”, did I limit myself to standard notation? to received forms? he wrote in his Poetic Manifesto of 1951. I was irresistibly to forced choice among “isms”?) and the way I lived (why There he might wander bare drawn to translate his music into mine. has so much of what I wanted brought me so little joy?) With the spirits of the horseshoe bay One poem captivated me: Fern Hill, about the poet’s A return to Thomas revealed that my life crises Or the stars’ seashore dead, “young and easy” summers at his family’s farm of the continued to unfold in eerie synchronicity with his own. I Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales same name. I wanted to write this work as a gift for my discovered the terrifying Poem on his Birthday, in which And wishbones of wild geese, high-school music teacher, Mrs Bella Tillis, who first his 35th year is not celebrated but “spurned”. Poem on his With blessed, unborn God and His ghost, encouraged my musical ambitions. She introduced Fern Birthday distorts the “lamb-white days” of Fern Hill to And every soul His priest, Hill with piano accompanying her (and, once, my) school the grotesqueries of “herons who walk in their shroud”. Gulled and chanter in young Heaven’s fold choir. Poem in October’s sparkling ocean becomes a gull- Be at cloud quaking peace, Fern Hill is a blithe poem, yet touched by darkness; haunted river Styx. Yet even as the poet “sails out to die” time finally holds the poet “green and dying”, but the poem (Thomas himself died at 39), he exults that “the closer I But dark is a long way. itself, formally just an ABA song extended into a wide move to death … the louder the sun blooms”. He, on the earth of the night, alone arch, sings joyously of youth and its keen perceptions. I set Only then did I realize that I’d been writing a memory With all the living, prays, it for mezzo-soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra, aiming play on Thomas’s poetry for twenty years, of which this Who knows the rocketing wind will blow to match the forthright lyricism of the text. (The direction would be the final – and most difficult – act. I realized The bones out of the hills, “with simplicity” is everywhere in the printed score.) that the bel canto vocalism of the previous pieces couldn’t And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last Ten years went by. In 1969, Charles Wadsworth of the contain this character’s midlife madness. I needed the Rage shattered waters kick Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center asked for a darkly operatic address of a dramatic baritone. The sunny Masts and fishes to the still quick stars, work for its opening season. Again I turned to Thomas. chorus of Fern Hill needed to return, transfigured, as Faithlessly unto Him His feelings in Poem in October (inspired by his turning demons of the poet’s mind. Only the largest symphonic thirty) mirrored my own thoughts at arriving at that age. forces could support, lead, and colour these voices. What Fern Hill had likened the safety of childhood to the I didn’t yet know was how my musical means could verdant Welsh landscape. The sea, often in Thomas an encompass every emotion of Thomas’s character. I

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5 Poem on his Birthday couldn’t hear Thomas – or myself, anymore – in the kinds So now I needed a new Thomas text – probably a late of music I’d written before. one – that could link to Poem on his Birthday, introduce In the mustardseed sun, So Poem on his Birthday became only the second piece both Fern Hill and Poem in October, and reveal the By full tilt river and switchback sea I ever composed (after my Oboe Concerto) that I built Thomas who was bawdy, bold, and filled with joy. So Where the cormorants scud, architecturally. That is, I planned the piece out in its large much of the setting mourned a joy that had passed: the In his house on stilts high among beaks paragraphs, its small gestures, and its palette of sounds audience needed to experience what Thomas missed so And palavers of birds both familiar and unfamiliar, before I ever turned to the keenly. This sandgrain day in the bent bay’s grave keyboard or the page. I took the important themes from the I searched the Collected Poems. Nothing seemed right. He celebrates and spurns first two pieces, and sketched their possible paths through Then, I turned to what I thought would be Thomas’s prose His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age; the new score; I dreamed up (sometimes literally) an array introduction to his poetry. Herons spire and spear. of sounds (sea winds, bird calls, ghost cries) and decided But Author’s Prologue – his penultimate work – was a on their precise shape first, their notation later. Then I lavish, exultant poem that bellowed with lust and life. Its Under and round him go composed the piece, allowing that “blueprint” to govern 102 lines boast a breathtaking formal elegance: the first 51 Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails, Doing what they are told, the inclusion and inflection of a range of musics wider lines rhyme, in reverse order, with the last 51 – an aural Curlews aloud in the congered waves than I’d ever used up till then. palindrome! It called for music as unusual as it was Work at their ways to death, I thought I was finished. A Dylan Thomas Trilogy was buoyant. And it offered A Dylan Thomas Trilogy the And the rhymer in the long tongued room, given its premiere as a full-evening work in 1976 at formal inevitability I always dreamed for it. Who tolls his birthday bell, Washington National Cathedral. But things change. Little by little, the form came clear. The baritone Toils towards the ambush of his wounds; Twenty years later found me more at peace in both my soloist, large chorus, and orchestra from Poem on his Herons, steeple stemmed, bless. life and work than I had ever thought possible: so the Birthday would open the evening. Their music would draw trilogy no longer sounded emotionally complete to me. from that earlier score: their text would be Part I – the In the thistledown fall, Nor formally complete, either: Fern Hill and Poem in first 51 lines of the Author’s Prologue. Fern Hill, its He sings towards anguish; finches fly October, both pastorals, sounded too similar to each other chamber choir and orchestra now clearly framed within In the claw tracks of hawks to be effective played consecutively, and yet too different the larger forces, would follow: its mezzo-soprano soloist On a seizing sky, small fishes glide from the mature setting of Poem on his Birthday to which recast as a boy soprano, making unmissable the trilogy’s Through wynds and shells of drowned they should lead. “three ages of man” imagery. Baritone and chorus break Ship towns to pastures of otters. He I approached my valued colleague Leonard Slatkin, in, scherzando, with Part II of the Author’s Prologue, its In his slant, racking house maestro of the National Symphony Orchestra and asked if gleeful, appetitive strophes further characterizing the And the hewn coils of his trade perceives I could at last complete the trilogy for him. He baritone and preparing the audience for the pastoral Herons walk in their shroud. enthusiastically agreed; and I set to work. ruminations of Poem in October, still sung by tenor soloist The more I thought about A Dylan Thomas Trilogy, the but now rescored for the same chamber orchestra as Fern The livelong river’s robe more I realized that oratorio’s quasi-operatic delineation of Hill’s. Now, its preparations complete, Poem on his Of minnows wreathing around their prayer; character was exactly what I wanted here. And if this Birthday would appear as written; save for one change in And far at sea he knows, leading character was an adult interpreting of his future its final bars, in which the imagery of reconciliation, left Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end through his past, then Fern Hill and Poem in October incomplete in its first incarnation, would here at last find Under a serpent cloud, needed to seem not real-time events but as memories. vocal apotheosis. Dolphins dive in their turnturtle dust, While Poem on his Birthday would still end the evening, At last A Dylan Thomas Trilogy feels complete to me. The rippled seals streak down the audience had to hear the first two pieces from the To kill and their own tide daubing blood perspective of the third. John Corigliano Slides good in the sleek mouth.

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John Corigliano There could I marvel John Corigliano is among the most honored composers My birthday in the United States. He was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Away but the weather turned around. Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 2, introduced in J. Henry Fair November 2000 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra It turned away from the blithe country and subsequently heard in New York, Helsinki, Berlin, And down the other air and the blue altered sky and Moscow. In March 2000, Corigliano’s third film Streamed again a wonder of summer Photo: score, for The Red Violin, was awarded the Academy With apples Award (“Oscar.”) Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, an Pears and red currants impassioned response to the AIDS crisis, captured the And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Best New Orchestral Through the parables Composition; The Chicago Symphony’s recording of Of sun light the piece won the Grammy awards for both Best New And the legends of the green chapels Composition and Best Orchestral Performance, and it has has been played by over 150 different orchestras And the twice told fields of infancy worldwide. A Distinguished Professor of Music at the That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine. City University of New York, Corigliano was named in These were the woods the river and the seas 1991 both to the faculty of the Juilliard School and to Where a boy the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an In the listening organization of American’s most prominent artists, Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy sculptors, architects, writers, and composers: he is one To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide. of the few living composers to have a string quartet And the mystery named after him. Commissioned by The Metropolitan Sang alive Opera, where it premièred in December 1991, Still in the water and singingbirds. Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa” The Ghosts of Versailles sold out two engagements at the Metropolitan And there could I marvel my birthday (1991 and 1994) as well as its 1995 production at the Away but the weather turned around. And the true Chicago Lyric Opera. The nationwide telecast of the Joy of the long dead child sang burning Metropolitan’s première production was released on In the sun. videocassette and laser-disk by Deutsche Grammophon. It was my thirtieth Following its première, The Ghosts of Versailles Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon collected the Composition of the Year award from the Though the town below lay leaved with October blood. first International Classic Music Awards. In April 1999, The Ghosts of Versailles received its European première, in a O may my heart’s truth new production directed and designed for the opening of the new opera house in Hannover, Germany, and is due for Still be sung another revival at the Met in the ’09-’10 season. Recent works include 2004’s Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3, for On this high hill in a year’s turning. multiple wind ensembles: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (‘The Red Violin’) released on compact disk by Sony in December 2007 with Marin Alsop leading soloist Joshua Bell and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the orchestral Copyright © 1946 by New Directions. song cycle Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, recorded for Naxos in March 2007, with JoAnn Falletta Used by arrangement with Harold Ober Associates Inc. leading soprano soloist Hila Plitmann and the Buffalo Philharmonic (Naxos 8.559331). Corigliano’s catalogue includes three symphonies, seven concerti (for violin, flute, clarinet, oboe, guitar percussion, and piano), numerous shorter works for orchestra and an extensive catalogue of chamber works, which have been recorded on numerous major labels. His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc.

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4 Poem in October Sir Thomas Allen Sir Thomas Allen is an established star of the great opera houses of the world. It was my thirtieth year to heaven At the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where in 2006 he celebrated the Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood 35th anniversary of his début with the company, he has sung over forty rôles. In And the mussel pooled and the heron 2006 he also celebrated the 25th anniversary of his début at the Metropolitan Priested shore Opera, New York. A regular guest at the world’s great opera houses, he is The morning beckon particularly acclaimed for his Billy Budd, Pelléas, Eugene Onegin, Ulisse and With water praying and call of seagull and rook Beckmesser, as well as the great Mozart rôles of Count Almaviva, Don Alfonso, And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Photo: Sussie Ahlburg Papageno, Guglielmo and, of course, Don Giovanni. Equally renowned on the Myself to set foot concert platform, he has appeared with many of the world’s great orchestras and That second In the still sleeping town and set forth. conductors. The greatest part of his repertoire has been extensively recorded with such distinguished names as Solti, Levine, Marriner, Haitink, Rattle, My birthday began with the water- Sawallisch and Muti. In the New Year’s Honours of 1989 he was created a Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name Commander of the British Empire and in the 1999 Queen’s Birthday Honours Above the farms and the white horses he was made a Knight Bachelor. And I rose John Tessier In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days. On the international stages of opera, concert, and recital, Canadian tenor John Tessier High tide and the heron dived when I took the road has gained attention and praise for the beauty and honesty of his voice, as well as his Over the border refined style and artistic versatility in the lyric tenor repertoire. He has performed with And the gates the major orchestras of Canada and the United States, including the Toronto Symphony, Of the town closed as the town awoke. Montreal Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and San Francisco A springful of larks in a rolling Symphony. Operatic highlights include Washington National Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling New York City Opera, Vancouver Opera and Glimmerglass Opera. Among his future Blackbirds and the sun of October engagements are performances with the Royal Opera Covent Garden, English National Summery Opera, Opera Geneva, Oper Frankfurt and the Metropolitan Opera. He can be heard On the hill’s shoulder, on recordings of Mozart’s Requiem on the Telarc and Dorian labels, Bach Cantatas on Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly Naxos (8.554825), and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with Music of the Baroque Chicago. Come in the morning where I wandered and listened To the rain wringing Ty Jackson Wind blow cold Twelve year old Ty Jackson has performed with the Nashville Symphony on numerous In the wood faraway under me. occasions, including a recent recording of George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess. He is also a member of the Nashville Boy Choir at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music Pale rain over the dwindling harbour where he has been a featured soloist on tour in Germany and at Walt Disney Word, And over the sea wet church the size of a snail Florida. He currently studies with Murray and Hazel Somerville as well as Muzetta With its horns through mist and the castle Swann. Ty also enjoys theater and performed the lead rôle in a local production of Brown as owls Oliver! He studies guitar, violin and dance at The Main Stage, where he is a member of But all the gardens the string ensemble, and a national champion clogger. He is a member of the acoustic Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales group, Green on the Vyne, in which he sings and plays rhythm guitar. He has toured with Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud. this group to Georgia and locally, and performed at the 2008 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards Show in Nashville.

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Nashville Symphony Orchestra 3 Author’s Prologue (II) Led by Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin, incoming Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, and President and CEO Alan D. Valentine, the Grammy Award-winning Nashville Symphony has a growing international reputation for its recordings Hoo, there, in castle keep, Hubbub and fiddle, this tune and innovative programming. With 140 performances annually, the 84-member Nashville Symphony is an arts leader You king singsong owls, who moonbeam On a tongued puffball) in Nashville and beyond, offering a broad range of pops and jazz concerts, special events, children’s concerts and The flickering runs and dive But animals thick as thieves community outreach programs. In 2003, the Nashville Symphony broke ground on the $123.5 million Schermerhorn The dingle furred deer dead! On God’s rough tumbling grounds Symphony Center, the new home of the Nashville Symphony, which opened in September 2006 to critical acclaim. Huloo, on plumbed bryns, (Hail to His beasthood!). Highlights of the Symphony Center include the 1,860-seat Laura Turner Concert Hall and the 3,000 square-foot Mike O my ruffled ring dove Beasts who sleep good and thin, Curb Family Music Education Hall. In the hooting, nearly dark Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked With Welsh and reverent rook, Hollow farms in a throng Nashville Symphony Chorus Coo rooing the woods’ praise, Of waters cluck and cling, For more than forty years the Nashville Symphony Chorus has regularly presented significant works from the classical Who moons her blue notes from her nest And barnroofs cockcrow war! choral repertoire from Baroque music to contemporary. During George Mabry’s ten-year tenure as Chorus Director, Down to the curlew herd! O kingdom of neighbours, finned the Chorus has also been featured in three CDs, Celebration in Song, a collection of sacred music recorded in 2000, Ho, hullaballoing clan Felled and quilled, flash to my patch Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, recorded on the Naxos label (8.557060) in 2003, and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, released Agape, with woe Work ark and the moonshine on Decca in 2006. A further Nashville Symphony recording with the Chorus is now in progress with Naxos: Gian Carlo In your beaks, on the grabbing capes! Drinking Noah of the bay, Menotti’s My Christmas, a cantata with male chorus to be coupled with Menotti’s popular opera Amahl and the Night Heigh, on horseback hill, jack With pelt, and scale, and fleece: Visitors. The Chorus, now numbering 146 voices in concert, performs at least twice each season as part of the Nashville Whisking hare! who Only the drowned deep bells Symphony’s SunTrust Classical Series, in addition to special concerts such as Handel’s Messiah each December. Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship’s Of sheep and churches noise Clangour as I hew and smite Poor peace as the sun sets (A clash of anvils for my And dark shoals every holy field. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– BARITONE CHORUS We will ride out alone, and then, Out there, crow black, men Under the stars of Wales, Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails, Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across With their fishwife cross The water lidded lands, By scummed, starfish sands Photo: Alan Poizner Manned with their loves they’ll move, At a wood’s dancing hoof, Like wooden islands, hill to hill. Froth, flute, fin and quill Huloo, my prowed dove with a flute! Tangled with chirrup and fruit, Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox, On a breakneck of rocks Tom tit and Dai mouse! In my seashaken house My ark sings in the sun In the torrent salmon sun, At God speeded summer’s end At God speeded summer’send And the flood flowers now. This day winding down now.

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And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Leonard Slatkin Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, Appointed Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and In the sun born over and over, Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra I ran my heedless ways, from 2008, after completing his twelfth and final season as Music My wishes raced through the house high hay Director of the National Symphony Orchestra, the distinguished And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows American conductor Leonard Slatkin continues as Principal Guest In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Advisor to Before the children green and golden the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Laureate of the Photo: Steve J. Sherman Follow him out of grace, Saint Louis Symphony, of which he was Music Director for seventeen seasons. He has served as Festival Director of the Cleveland Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Orchestra’s Blossom Festival (1990-1999), Principal Guest Conductor Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, of the Philharmonia Orchestra (1997-2000), Chief Conductor of the Nor that riding to sleep BBC Symphony Orchestra (2000-2004) and Principal Guest I should hear him fly with the high fields Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. (2004-2007), in a brilliant international career. His many recordings Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, have won seven Grammy awards and more than sixty Grammy Time held me green and dying, Nominations, while honours and awards include the 2003 National Though I sang in my chains like the sea. Medal of Arts, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Gold Baton for service to American Copyright © 1945 by Dylan Thomas. music, ASCAP awards with both the National and Saint Louis Used by arrangement with Harold Ober Associates Inc. symphonies, honorary doctorates from The Juilliard School, Indiana University, University of Missouri and the Declaration of Honour in Silver from the Austrian ambassador to the United States for outstanding contributions to cultural relations. George Mabry George Mabry has been the director of the Nashville Symphony Chorus since 1998 and is professor emeritus of music at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. He served as director of its Center for the Creative Arts and director of choral activities at the university until his retirement in 2003.A native Tennessean, he holds a bachelor's degree from Florida State

University and master of music and doctor of philosophy degrees from George Photo: Harry Butler Peabody College for Teachers at Vanderbilt University. He is active as a choral clinician and festival adjudicator, and has conducted All-State choirs in Kentucky and Virginia. George Mabry is a published composer and arranger. He was formerly director of entertainment for Opryland U.S.A. in Nashville, and his musical shows toured the Soviet Union under the auspices of the U.S. State Department and appeared three times for the President of the United States at the White House. In 1983, Mabry was honored as the first Austin Peay faculty member to receive both the Distinguished Professor Award and the Richard M. Hawkins Award for Scholarly and Creative Achievement. In 2003, he received the Governor's Award in the Arts for Arts Leadership in Tennessee and the Spirit of Tennessee Award from the Tennessee Arts Academy.

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1 Author’s Prologue (I) 2 Fern Hill

This day winding down now For my sawn, splay sounds), Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs At God speeded summer’s end Out of these seathumbed leaves About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, In the torrent salmon sun, That will fly and fall The night above the dingle starry, In my seashaken house Like leaves of trees and as soon Time let me hail and climb On a breakneck of rocks Crumble and undie Golden in the heydays of his eyes, Tangled with chirrup and fruit, Into the dogdayed night. And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns Froth, flute, fin and quill Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips, And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves At a wood’s dancing hoof, And the dumb swans drub blue Trail with daisies and barley By scummed, starfish sands My dabbed bay’s dusk, as I hack Down the rivers of the windfall light. With their fishwife cross This rumpus of shapes Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails, For you to know And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns (Under the stars of Wales)* How I, a spinning man, About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, Out there, crow black, men Glory also this star, bird In the sun that is young once only, Tackled with clouds, who kneel Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest. Time let me play and be To the sunset nets, Hark: I trumpet the place, Golden in the mercy of his means, Geese nearly in heaven, boys From fish to jumping hill! And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Stabbing, and herons, and shells Look: I build my bellowing ark Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, That speak seven seas, To the best of my love And the sabbath rang slowly Eternal waters away As the flood begins, In the pebbles of the holy streams. From the cities of nine Out of the fountainhead Days’ night whose towers will catch Of fear, rage red, manalive, All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay In the religious wind Molten and mountainous to stream Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air Like stalks of tall, dry straw, Over the wound asleep And playing, lovely and watery At poor peace I sing Sheep white hollow farms And fire green as grass, To you strangers (though song To Wales in my arms. And nightly under the simple stars Is a burning and crested act, As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, The fire of birds in * Insertion from Author’s Prologue (II) All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the night-jars The world’s turning wood, Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. Prologue by Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1971 by the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white Used by arrangement with Harold Ober Associates Inc. With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise.

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1 Author’s Prologue (I) 2 Fern Hill

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8.559394 16 NAXOS Playing John Time: CORIGLIANO 66:48 (b. 1938) Disc Made in Canada. Printed & Assembled USA. ൿ broadcasting and copying of this compact disc prohibited. translations reserved. Unauthorised public performance, All rights in this sound recording, artwork, texts and 8.559394

& AMERICAN CLASSICS

Ꭿ A Dylan Thomas Trilogy CORIGLIANO: 2008 Naxos Rights International Ltd. 2008 Naxos Rights International (1960, revised 1999) Fern Hill is a blithe poem, yet touched by darkness; time finally 1 Author’s Prologue (I) 4:55 holds the poet “green and dying” … 2 Fern Hill* 14:29 Poem in October begins in Thomas’s 3 Author’s Prologue (II) 5:35 seafront town: the poet, marking his birthday, climbs to a high hill, where 4 Poem in October† 14:38 he reflects on his youth and mulls his 5 Poem on his Birthday 27:04 future … Poem on his Birthday

distorts the “lamb-white days” of Dylan Thomas TrilogyA Sir Thomas Allen, Baritone Fern Hill to the grotesqueries of “herons who walk in their shroud”: Ty Jackson, Boy Soprano* Poem in October’s sparkling ocean John Tessier, Tenor† becomes a gull-haunted river Styx … A Dylan Thomas Trilogy Nashville Symphony Chorus Author’s Prologue – his penultimate (Chorus Director: George Mabry) work – was a lavish, exultant poem that bellowed with lust and life. It Nashville Symphony Orchestra called for music as unusual as it was Leonard Slatkin buoyant. And it offered A Dylan Thomas Trilogy the formal inevit- ORLD REMIÈRE ECORDING W P R ability I always dreamed for it … DDD Includes sung texts, which are also available at John Corigliano C www.naxos.com/libretti/559394.htm CORIGLIANO: Recorded at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, www.naxos.com M

Tennessee, USA, 2–4 December 2007 8.559394 8.559394 Producer: Steven Epstein Y Engineer & Editor: Richard King Publisher: G. Schirmer, Inc. Cover image: © Mav888 / Dreamstime.com K American flag, folk artist, 1880s NAXOS