Newer Every Day: Songs for Kiri (Emily Dickinson) Jake Heggie (b. 1961)

Commissioned by Welz Kauffman and the Ravinia Festival in celebration of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s 70th Birthday

First Performance: August 12, 2014 at the Ravinia Festival’s Martin Theater, Highland Park, IL Kiri Te Kanawa, Soprano, Jake Heggie, Piano

“We turn not older with the years, but newer every day.” —Emily Dickinson

1. 4. Silence is all we dread. That I did always love There’s Ransom in a Voice– I bring thee Proof But Silence is Infinity. That till I loved Himself have not a face. I never lived–Enough– That I shall love alway– 2. I argue thee I’m Nobody! Who are you? That love is life– Are you–Nobody–Too? And life hath Immortality– Then there’s a pair of us! This–dost thou doubt–Sweet– Don’t tell! they’d advertise–you know! Then have I How dreary–to be–Somebody! Nothing to show How public–like a Frog– But Calvary– To tell one’s name–the livelong June– To an admiring Bog! 5. Some say goodnight–at night– 3. I say goodnight by day– Fame is a bee. Good-bye–the Going utter me– Goodnight, I still reply– It has a song- For parting, that is night, It has a sting– And presence, simply dawn– Itself, the purple on the height Ah, too, it has a wing. Denominated morn. Look back on Time, with kindly eyes– He doubtless did his best– How softly sinks that trembling sun In Human Nature’s West–

Song Of The Last Crossing (Magda Bogin) Jorge Sosa (b. 1976)

Jorge Sosa is a Mexican composer, currently based in New York City. He was commissioned to write the Song Of The Last Crossing in 2012, to celebrate the opening of the National Opera Center in New York, as part of a larger set of works; the Opera America Songbook. This poem, written by the poet Magda Bogin, is about a woman who is about to die and says goodbye to the two children she cared for during her lifetime; the child that she looked after as a nanny in New York City and her own son, who she had to leave behind to be able to earn enough money elsewhere to take care of him. The song is divided in two parts; the first one in English and the second one in Spanish. In the English part, the woman says goodbye to her Central Park boy, the child she nannied and who almost became more of a real child to her than the child she bore herself, but had to leave behind. It is when she switches to Spanish, that she addresses her own son and her feelings of guilt and powerlessness toward him. I believe this song sends a very strong political message. It is a critique on the nannying culture in New York City, but also on the big social and economical schism which still exists between people today. How for some people the world holds nothing but possibilities, where others are faced with the harsh realities of hunger and poverty on a daily basis. It is a critique on how the world has become accessible and borders can be crossed, but only for those who hold the right passport and have the financial means to do so. It is a critique on our capitalistic society and ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality where the fortune of few very often means the misfortune of many.

I held you I raised you I loved you, A la roro niño, a la roro ya I bathed you. I already left, my son. I swept and cooked and made your bed, I returned to the nest. I fed you and cleaned you, Your mother no longer flies. I took you to school. Don’t you recognize me? I sang you to sleep like my very own child. It could be that with the years you have forgotten There were times when I forgot and called you me. mine. The abandonment creates a tomb, My Central Park boy! I gave you the love I should where long ago you let me go. have saved for my own son. The crime of leaving you was not my fault. I told myself I loved you both, I did not go wanting to leave. But it was like paying of an endless debt. But the hunger isn’t punished. A hole like hunger clawed me from within: For what time steals from us, is priceless. My son’s voice reaching me from far away Because the love of a mother never dies. My Central Park boy, I’ve come to say goodbye. A la roro niño. Goodbye to the borders which I have crossed Goodbye to the customs, to crying, to fear. Here ends the light journey, light without bones or tracks. Without ticket I emigrate for the last time. Beyond the light I guess the place that awaits me. There, hours and years don’t exist. Beyond peace and oblivion It is coming, my new home, my destiny. A la roro niño.

Translation: Laure-Catherine Beyers

In the Early Evening (Louise Glück) John Harbison (b.1938)

For the Tanglewood summer of 2017 Emanuel Ax and Dawn Upshaw invited me to write a single song for their Schubert’s Summer Journey program, a six-concert series encompassing music from Schubert’s final year plus complementary works. In setting Louise Glück’s “Poem”—from her second (and first truly characteristic) collection, The House on Marshland—I began with a Schubertian accompaniment figure, in the spirit of that series. This stand-alone song seemed isolated, so I added two more “coming of age” themed poems from the same collection: “Gemini” and “Departure.” These formed a set, first performed together in summer 2018, until I began to hear the need to balance them with a larger, very recent Glück poem, also called “Poem,” soon to be attached as conclusion.

– John Harbison

Poem In the early evening, as now, a man is bending Gemini over his writing table. There is a soul in me Slowly he lifts his head; a woman It is asking appears, carrying roses. to be given its body Her face floats to the surface of the mirror, It is asking marked with the green spokes of rose stems. to be given blue eyes It is a form a skull matted of suffering: then always the transparent page with black hair raised to the window until its veins emerge that shape as words finally filled with ink. already formed & detaching And I am meant to understand So the past put forth what binds them together a house filled with or to the gray house held firmly in place by dusk asters & white lilac because I must enter their lives: a child it is spring, the pear tree in her cotton dress filming with weak, white blossoms. the lawn, the copper beech— such of my own lives Departure I have cast off—the sunlight My father is standing on a railroad platform. chipping at the curtains Tears pool in his eyes, as though the face & the wicker chairs glimmering in the window were the face of uncovered, winter after winter, someone as the stars finally he was once. But the other has forgotten; thicken & descend as snow. as my father watches, he turns away, drawing the shade over his face, goes back to his reading. And already in its deep groove the train is waiting with its breath of ashes.

Poems from The House on Marshland by Louise Glück. © 1975 by The Ecco Press. Permission pending from the Wylie Agency.

Feeling the world as it passes through you (Naomi Shihab-Nye) Martin Hennessy (b. 1953)

This cycle is dedicated to Judy Cope, a friend and musical colleague from my past whom I was delighted to re- meet after 25 years (“since playing my Juilliard audition” as she reminded me.) We were gobsmacked to discover the paths each had taken. She, from an accomplished singer to a career in arts administration (now executive director of the Sorel Foundation) and I, from many years as a collaborative pianist to a composer of art song and chamber opera. Judy explored my work, admired it and commissioned this piece to be premiered this evening at SongFest 2019. I am immensely grateful for her belief in my music.

One important stipulation of the commission was setting the texts of a contemporary American female poet. It was then that I began a series of email and phone conversations with Rosemary Ritter of SongFest whose insatiable appetite for poetry, existential philosophy and meditation practice mirrored my own. Rosemary recommended the work of Naomi Shihab Nye and sent me two eminently settable poems, “Woven by Air, Texture of Air” and “Cross That Line”. Rosemary also recommended two On Being podcasts with Krista Tippett, interviewing Nye which helped me deepen my understanding of the poet’s worldview. “Woven by Air” as a showpiece for soprano was a no brainer and of course, “Cross That Line” would be for baritone. Thus, a cycle for soprano and baritone seemed a logical path. After identifying “Supple Cord” and “Hello” as contrasting pieces for each voice, I pinpointed “300 Goats” as a poem I could fashion into a final duet.

Naomi Shihab Nye is known for the petite discoveries in her poems. With a gently probing curiosity she reveals the magic of the everyday and ordinary. However, the subjects in her poems move in a spaciousness and expectancy that take them to the border of the self, where they see their shadow, peer into the abyss, and for sudden flashes, experience the uncanny dissolution of self and other. Her poetry is a practiced awareness of life, all portals open, everything noticed, everything cherished. It is ultimately a practice of unity and oneness.

I chose the title for this cycle of four songs and a duet from words the poet said in an On Being podcast. In one response to interviewer, Krista Tippett, Nye described “feeling the world as it passes through you as a kind of text.”

1. For “Woven by Air, Texture of Air”, I constructed a moto perpetuo peppered with the text’s sporadic interruptions. 2. During the Red Scare of the 1950’s Paul Robeson’s passport was revoked and he was denied entry into Canada to sing for a Labor rally. In response he organized a concert at the Peace Arch located at the border of Washington and British Columbia. He arrived in a flatbed truck and sang over the border to a Canadian audience of 40,000 people. In “Cross That Line” I intimate the sound of an old spiritual to mirror the powerful simplicity of Robeson’s performances. For the moral instruction of the poem’s second half I introduce new material in 6/8 to animate the poet’s cry for transformation. 3. In “Supple Cord” I composed undulating piano music to suggest the cord and employ 5/8 to paint the dreamy landscape of her memory, filtering up to inform the present. 4. Ovid opens Metamorphoses with the line: “Let me sing to you now of how people turn into other things.” In “Hello” Nye does a rift on this shifting instability as human is reincarnated into what s/he fears most. Once I found a piano theme with concurrent upward motion in the left hand and downward motion in the right to suggest the inexorable movements of the rat, I was on my way to putting this patter song of terror and dark comedy on its feet. 5. For “300 Goats” I use a madrigalian style to propel the dramatic storm towards the comic punchline. – Martin Hennessy

Woven By Air, Texture of Air Stay humble, blend, belong to all directions. Some birds hide in leaves so effectively Fly low, love a shadow. And sing, sing freely, you don't see they're all around you. never let anything get in the way of your singing, Brown tilted heads, observing human maneuvers not darkness, not winter, on a sidewalk. Was that a crumb someone threw? not the cries of flashier birds, not the silence Picking and poking, no fanfare for company, that finds you steadfast gray huddle on a branch, blending in. pen ready, at the edge of four a.m. Attention deeper than a whole day. Your day is so wide it will outlive everyone. Who says, I'll be a thoughtful bird when I grow up? It has no roof, no sides.

Cross That Line Hello Paul Robeson stood Some nights on the northern border the rat with pointed teeth of the USA makes his long way back and sang into Canada to the bowl of peaches. where a vast audience He stands on the dining room table sat on folding chairs sinking his tooth waiting to hear him. drinking the pulp He sang into Canada. of each fruity turned-up face His voice left the USA knowing you will read when his body was this message and scream. not allowed to cross It is his only text, that line. to take and take in darkness, Remind us again, to be gone before you awaken brave friend. and your giant feet What countries may we start creaking the floor. sing into? Where is the mother of the rat? What lines should we all The father, the shredded nest, be crossing? which breath were we taking What songs travel toward us when the rat was born, from far away when he lifted his shivering snout to deepen our days? to rafter and rivet and stone? I gave him the names of the devil, Supple Cord seared and screeching names, My brother, in his small white bed, I would not enter those rooms held one end. without a stick to guide me, I tugged the other I leaned on the light, shuddering, to signal I was still awake. and the moist earth under the house, We could have spoken, the trailing tails of clouds, could have sung said he was in the closet, to one another, the drawer of candles, we were in the same room his nose was a wick. for five years, How would we live together but the soft cord with our sad shoes and hideouts, with its little frayed ends our lock on the door connected us and his delicate fingered paws in the dark, that could clutch and grip, gave comfort his blank slate of fur even if we had been bickering and the pillow where we press our faces? all day. The bed that was a boat is sinking. When he fell asleep first And the shores of morning loom up and his end of the cord lined with little shadows, dropped to the floor, things we never wanted to be, or meet, I missed him terribly, and all the rats are waving hello. though I could hear his even breath and we had such long and separate lives Naomi Shihab Nye, “Hello” from Words Under the ahead. Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Reprinted from A MAZE ME, Greenwillow, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book of poetry is You and Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005.

300 Goats In icy fields. Is water flowing in the tank? Will they huddle together, warm bodies pressing? (Is it the year of the goat or the sheep? Scholars debating Chinese zodiac, follower or leader.) O lead them to a warm corner, little ones toward bulkier bodies. Lead them to the brush, which cuts the icy wind. Another frigid night swooping down — Aren’t you worried about them? I ask my friend, who lives by herself on the ranch of goats, far from here near the town of Ozona. She shrugs, “Not really, they know what to do. They’re goats.”

Changing Light (Rabbi Jules Harlow) Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952)

The piece has been written for Edna Michell’s Compassion project. In the composition I follow the idea of a dialogue, suggested by the text I have chosen. The intimate nature and fragile sound world of the duo mirror the fragility of our uncertain existence. The text, originally from the Siddur Sim Shalom, a Hebrew book of prayers, has been translated into English by Rabbi Jules Harlow.

Light and darkness, night and day. We marvel at the mystery of the stars. Moon and sky, sand and sea. We marvel at the mystery of the sun. Twilight, high noon, dusk and dawn. Though we are mortal, we are Creation’s crown. Flesh and bone, steel and stone. We dwell in fragile, temporary shelters. Grant steadfast love, compassion, grace. Sustain us, Lord; our origin is dust. Splendor, mercy, majesty, love endure. We are but little lower than the angels. Resplendent skies, sunset, sunrise. The grandeur of Creation lifts our lives. Evening darkness, morning dawn. Renew our lives as You renew all time.

A Kindling Flame (Hannah Szenes) Samuel Rosner (b.1998)

A Kindling Flame is my earliest song cycle, written when I was fourteen years old, and is a tribute to the Hungarian-Jewish poet Hannah Szenes (1921-1944). During World War II, Szenes parachuted into Yugoslavia to aid the resistance in fighting the Nazis and liberating Jews from concentration camps. She was ultimately captured, tortured, and shot by firing squad at the age of 23. Despite having endured prolonged torture at the hands of the Nazis, Szenes refused to reveal a single detail about her mission, and emerged as a heroine of the Holocaust, a genocide that took many members of my own family.

Each movement of the cycle sets a different text by Hannah Szenes, a poem, a diary entry, and a letter, all written in Hebrew. The first text, Ashrei Hagafrur, is the last poem that Szenes ever wrote. Ashrei Hagafrur was written shortly before the start of Szenes’ rescue mission, and compares her sacred fervor in carrying out her mission to a “...match consumed in kindling flame,” the imagery which gives my song cycle its title. The second text, Bakeleh, is a bleak diary entry that Szenes wrote in her prison cell, in which she counts the narrow measurements of her cell and fears the fleeting nature of her life. The final movement of the cycle, Yesh Kochavim, is set to a letter Szenes wrote to her mother, which states that as stars shine even after they have long been extinct, there are people whose brilliance lights the world even after their passing. Her letter is prophetic, as Szenes eventually became a lasting inspiration to the Jewish people.

I have performed this cycle numerous times as both a singer and a pianist, premiering it at Juilliard in 2014, and performing it in various other venues such as Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, live on NPR’s From the Top, at several Holocaust Remembrance events in Harvard University, and in Nice, France, in a performance dedicated to the victims of the 2016 Bastille Day Truck attack. Two years ago, the cycle was performed here at the Colburn School for SongFest 2017, in a recital given by my good friend, tenor Nathaniel Bear, and accompanied by Javier Arrebola on piano.

While I may have been young when I composed this cycle, out of all of my vocal works, this has been perhaps the composition that has stuck with me the most. It is an honor to present my song cycle for you all this evening, and to share Hannah Szenes’ incredible story of courage, tragedy, and defiance. – Samuel Rosner I. Ashrei Hagafrur (Blessed is the match) Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the hurts. Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

II. Bakeleh (Prison) One - two - three... eight feet long Two strides across, the rest is dark... Life is a fleeting question mark One - two - three... maybe another week. Or the next month may still find me here, But death, I feel is very near. I could have been 23 next July I gambled on what mattered most, The dice were cast. I lost.

III. Yesh Kochavim (There are stars) There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world even though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. From Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan John Corigliano (b. 1938)

When Sylvia McNair asked me to write her a major song cycle for Carnegie Hall, she had only one request; to choose an American text. I have set only four poets in my adult compositional life: Stephen Spender, Richard Wilbur, Dylan Thomas (whose major works generated the oratorio A Dylan Thomas Trilogy) and William M. Hoffman, collaborator with me on, among other, shorter pieces, the opera The Ghosts of Versailles. Aside from asking Bill to create a new text, I had no ideas. Except that I had always heard, by reputation, of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs.

So I bought a collection of his texts, and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard-and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language. I then contacted Jeff Rosen, his manager, who approached Bob Dylan with the idea of re-setting his poetry to my music. I do not know of an instance in which this has been done before (which was part of what appealed to me), so I needed to explain that these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete. Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re- interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be. Nor would their settings make any attempt at pop or rock writing. I wanted to take poetry I knew to be strongly associated with popular art and readdress it in terms of concert art-crossover in the opposite direction, one might say. Dylan granted his permission, and I set to work.

I chose seven poems for what became a thirty-five minute cycle. “A Prologue: Mr. Tambourine Man”, in a fantastic and exuberant manner, precedes five searching and reflective monologues that form the core of the piece; and “Epilogue: Forever Young” makes a kind of folk-song benediction after the cycle’s close. Dramatically, the inner five songs trace a journey of emotional and civic maturation, from the innocence of “Clothes Line” through the beginnings of awareness of a wider world (“Blowin’ in the Wind”), through the political fury of “Masters of War”, to a premonition of an apocalyptic future (“All Along the Watchtower”), culminating in a vision of a victory of ideas (“Chimes of Freedom”). Musically, each of the five songs introduces an accompanimental motive that becomes the principal motive of the next. The descending scale introduced in “Clothes Line” resurfaces as the passacaglia which shapes “Blowin’ in the Wind”. The echoing pulse-notes of that song harden into the hammered ostinato under “Masters of War”; the stringent chords of that song’s finale explode into the raucous accompaniment under “All Along the Watchtower”; and that song’s repeated figures dissolve into the bell-sounds of “Chimes of Freedom”. The work is dedicated to Mark Adamo. – John Corigliano

Prelude: Mr. Tambourine man ...Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand, Vanished from my hand, Left my blindly here to stand but still not sleeping. My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet, I have no one to meet And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship, My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip, My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels To be wanderin’. I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready to fade Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun, It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run... And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind, I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow you’re Seein’ that he’s chasing. ...Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, Let me forget about today until tomorrow. ...I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to...

Clothes Line After a while we took in the clothes, Nobody said very much. Just some old wild shirts and a couple pairs of pants Which nobody really wanted to touch. Mama come in and picked up a book An’ Papa asked her what it was. Someone else asked, “What do you care?” Papa said, “Well, just because.” Then they started to take back their clothes, Hang ‘em on the line. It was January the thirtieth And everybody was feelin’ fine. The next day everybody got up Seein’ if the clothes were dry. The dogs were barking, a neighbor passed, Mama, of course, she said, “Hi!” “Have you heard the news?” he said, with a grin, “The Vice-President’s gone mad!” “Where?” “Downtown.” “When?” “Last night.” “Hmm, say, that’s too bad!” “Well, there’s nothin’ we can do about it,” said the neighbor, “It’s just somethin’ we’re gonna have to forget.” “Yes, I guess so,” said Ma. Then she asked me if the clothes was still wet. I reached up, touched my shirt, And the neighbor said, “Are those clothes yours?” I said, “Some of ‘em, not all of ‘em.” He said, “Ya always help out around here with the chores?” I said, “Sometime, not all the time.” Then my neighbor, he blew his nose Just as papa yelled outside, “Mama wants you t’ come back in the house and bring them clothes.” Well, I just do what I’m told, So, I did it, of course. I went back in the house and Mama met me And then I shut all the doors.

Blowin’ in the Wind How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, The answer is blowin’ in the wind. How many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky? Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry? Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows That too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind... How many years can a mountain exist Before it’s washed to the sea? [The answer is blowin’ in the wind.] Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist Before they’re allowed to be free? [“blowin’ in the wind.”] ‘N’ how many times can a man turn his head, Pretending he just doesn’t see? ...blowin’...... blowin'...

Masters of War Come, [come], you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build all the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks [Come, come, you masters of war] I just want you to know I can see through your masks You that never done nothin’ But build to destroy You, you play with my world Like it’s your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly... You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people’s blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud You’ve thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain’t worth the blood That runs in your veins... Let me ask you one question Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul And I hope that you die And your death will come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I’ll watch while you’re lowered Down to your deathbed And I’ll stand o’er your grave ‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

Postlude: Forever Young May God bless and keep you always, May your wishes all come true, May you always do for others And let others do for you. May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young. May you grow up to be righteous, May you grow up to be true, May you always know the truth And see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, Stand upright and be strong, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young. May your hands always be busy May your feet always be swift, May you have a strong foundation When the winds of changes shift. May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young.

Agapi (Polymnia Athanasiadou Pappas) Theodosia Roussos (b. 1988)

Polymnia is a setting of three poems by Polymnia Pappas, Theodosia’s Great Grandmother from Thrace who survived the Greek Genocide. She and her ten siblings, and mother were forced on a death march from 1913-1918 toward the East of the Ottoman Empire. This was part of a systematic killing of Greek people living in the Ottoman Empire who lived in Thrace since before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. She was the eldest and had to bury five of her siblings and her mother during this time. She and four siblings survived and came to the U.S. to live in Astoria after 1922. These poems are about her experiences.

Love is an ether Now Christ and the world With the sweetest botanical Give understanding Love is capable To spread love, Of curing our ills A united goodness

With love everything is bright (Greek Orthodox memorial hymn) And appears in front of us Memory eternal With love, the neighborhood May her memory be eternal And the children want us Oh my dear Polymnia

Greek text by Polymnia Athanasiadou Pappas; English text by Theodosia Roussos; English translation by Theodosios & Theodosia Rousso Mirabai Songs (Mirabi, tran. by Robert Bly) John Harbison (b. 1938)

Mirabai’s ecstatic religious poetry was written in sixteenth century India. When she was twenty-seven, her husband was killed in a war. Rather than sacrifice her own life, as custom required, she left her family compound, wrote poems to the god Krishna, (“the Dark One”), and sang and danced them in the street as an outcast. Her strength of character is a constant throughout this dramatic, ever-changing cycle. The original version of the Mirabai Songs was for voice and piano. The instrumental version of the Mirabai Songs was made for practical reasons: the new music ensemble thrives, the voice and piano duo is disappearing. Each song is dedicated to a singer: I. It’s True, I Went To the Market (Janice Felty) II. All I Was Doing Was Breathing (Jan DeGaetani) III. Why Mira Can’t Go Back to Her Old House (Susan Larson) IV. Where Did You Go? (D’Anna Fortunato) V. The Clouds (Joan Heller) VI. Don’t Go, Don’t Go (Susan Quittmeyer.) Robert Bly’s beautiful translations are used with the permission of the poet and Red Ozier Press. – John Harbison

It’s True I Went to the Market All I Was Doing Was Breathing My friend, I went to the market and bought the Dark Something has reached out and taken in the beams One of my eyes. You claim by night, I claim by day. There is a longing, it is for his body, for every Actually I was beating a drum all the time I was hair of that dark body. buying him. All I was doing was being, and the Dancing Energy You say I gave too much; I say too little. came by my house. Actually I put him on a scale before I bought him. His face looks curiously like the moon, I saw it What I paid was my social body, my town body, from the side, smiling. my family body, and all my inherited jewels. My family says: “Don’t ever see him again!” And Mirabai says: The Dark One is my husband now. imply things in a low voice. Be with me when I lie down; you promised me this in But my eyes have their own life; they laugh at rules an earlier life. and know whose they are. I believe I can bear on my shoulders whatever you want to say of me. Mira says: Without the energy that lifts mountains, how am I to live? Why Mira Can’t Go Back To Her Old House The Clouds The colors of the Dark One have penetrated When I saw the dark clouds, I wept, Oh Dark One, Mira’s body; all the other colors washed out. I wept at the dark clouds. Making love with the Dark One and eating little, Black clouds soared up, and took some yellow those are my pearls and my carnelians. along; rain did fall, some rain fell long. Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those There was water east of the house, west of are my scarves and my rings. the house; fields all green. That’s enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher The one I love lives past those fields; rain taught me this. has fallen on my body, on my hair, as Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the I wait in the open door for him. Mountain Energy night and day. The Energy that holds up mountains is the I take the path that ecstatic human beings have energy Mirabai bows down to. taken for centuries. He lives century after century, and the test I don’t steal money, I don’t hit anyone. What I set for him he has passed. will you charge me with? I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s Don’t Go, Don’t Go shoulders; and now you want me to climb on Don’t go, don’t go. I touch your soles. I’m a jackass? Try to be serious. sold to you. No one knows where to find the bhakti path, show me where to go. Where Did You Go? I would like my own body to turn into a heap Where did you go, Holy One, after you left of incense and sandalwood and you set a my body? torch to it. Your flame jumped to the wick, and then you When I’ve fallen down to gray ashes, smear me on disappeared and left the lamp alone. your shoulders and chest. You put the boat into the surf, and then Mira says: You who lift the mountains, I have walked inland, leaving the boat in the ocean some light, I want to mingle it with yours. of parting. Mira says: Tell me when you will come to meet me.

Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz Reena Esmail (b. 1983)

Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz, at its core, is a piece about sisterhood. Each movement’s short text epitomizes the one of the many facets of having and being a sister. It is also about what sisterhood looks like when expanded beyond a single family or a single culture — when two women, from two different musical cultures create space for one another’s voices to be heard.

The first movement is a modern take on Delibes’s famous Flower Duet from the opera Lakme. In the opera, Delibes depicts two Indian women singing by a river. In 1880s France, this orientalism was a point of entry into another culture far away. But today, that culture is easily accessible, and this is my attempt to show you what an ‘updated’ version of this duet might sound like with a Hindustani singer actually present to represent herself. So much of Western art music is about creating dialogue between the old and new, responding to our vast canon and musical tradition. And for the work I do, and the cultures I want to connect, I couldn’t think of a better jumping-off point than this classic duet.

For the second movement, I wrote a classical Hindustani bandish or ‘fixed composition’ in what they call ati- vilambit — a tempo that is so slow that the western metronome doesn’t even have a setting for it. While Hindustani musicians would normally stay in one key for an entire piece (and, to be honest, for their entire professional career), this movement modulates once every avartan, or rhythmic cycle, and also allows space for improvisation within a very rigid western orchestral structure. Additionally, the singers are singing in two different raags — the Hindustani singer is in Charukeshi, while the soprano is in Vachaspati - and as the movement goes on, the spaces between these two raags get closer and closer.

The third movement is about mirrors and opposites. I used two different raags that are actual mirror images of one another: Bhup, a light and sweet raag, and Malkauns, a dark, heavy raag. You will hear the shifts in tonality as the phrases cross from one into the other. Also embedded in this piece is a classic Hindustani jugalbandi (a musical competition) that is done completely in mirror image, and with both Indian and Western solfege systems, and it ends with both women crossing into one another’s musical cultures: the Hindustani singer begins singing phrases in English and the soprano joins in for a tarana in harmony.

This piece has been almost a decade in the making. In 2009, I wrote a piece called Aria, for Hindustani vocalist and orchestra - it was the first time I had ever attempted to put a Hindustani musician in my work, and it was the beginning of a long journey of discovery between these two musical cultures. This piece is the result of what I’ve found along that journey — an encyclopedia of sorts, of the many points of resonance I’ve discovered between these musical cultures. In 2017, I wrote the first version of this piece, for two singers and orchestra as a commission from Albany Symphony. And I am so honored that SongFest has commissioned and is premiering this new chamber version — it is more intimate, and requires performing forces that are accessible to most professional singers. My hope is that this work will inspire some of the singers in the audience tonight, and beckon you to explore Hindustani music further, to collaborate with Indian classical singers, and to begin to explore the endless avenues of communication that are possible through the use of your own unique voice.

One of the greatest things I’ve learned in this process is that I cannot do it alone. These ideas are as much mine as they are Saili’s. We have spent hours and hours over many summers sitting at my kitchen table, drinking chai and dreaming up the ideas that have become this piece. And as Saili is quick to point out: this is a culmination, but also a beginning of everything that is yet to come. I might be a biological only-child, but I have found my musical soul sister in Saili.

(English translations included in parentheses where Hindi is different from paired phrase)

I. Two flowers, one branch Ek daali, do kaliyaan In this garden of life Is zindagi ke bagh mein Bahine bane saheliyaan (sisters become soulmates) My sister, my soul Meri sakhi, saheliyaan

II. Meri sakhi ki avaaz (my sister’s voice) Sweet is the voice of my sister ranj mein in the season of sorrow umeed ka ehsaas ([gives] a feeling of hope)

III. Saaya nahi, pratibimb hai bahin Not a shadow but a reflection of my sister Vibhil chabi, ek dusre ka darpan Lucid image, a mirror of one another My sister is both my mirror and my opposite Vo aks bhi hai aur saaya bhi