Lisa Delan, Soprano Mikhail Pletnev, Piano
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 7:30pm First Congregational Church Lisa Delan, soprano Mikhail Pletnev, piano PROGRAM Gordon Getty (b. 1933) The White Election (1981) Lisa Delan A cycle of 32 songs for soprano and piano on poems by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) Part One: The Pensive Spring Part Three: Almost Peace 1. I Sing to Use the Waiting (major setting) 17. My First Well Day, Since Many Ill 2. There Is a Morn by Men Unseen 18. It Ceased to Hurt Me 3. I Had a Guinea Golden 19. I Like to See It Lap the Miles 4. If She Had Been the Mistletoe 20. Split the Lark and You’ll Find the Music 5. New Feet Within My Garden Go 21. The Cricket Sang 6. She Bore It 22. After a Hundred Years 7. I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed 23. The Clouds Their Backs Together Laid 8. I Should Not Dare to Leave My Friend 24. I Shall Not Murmur Part Two: So We Must Meet Apart Part Four: My Feet Slip Nearer 9. There Came a Day at Summer’s Full 25. The Grave My Little Cottage Is 10. The First Day’s Night Had Come 26. I Did Not Reach Thee 11. The Soul Selects Her Own Society 27. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books 12. It Was Not Death, for I Stood Up 28. There Came a Wind Like a Bugle 13. When I Was Small, a Woman Died 29. The Going from a World We Know 14. I Cried at Pity, Not at Pain 30. Upon His Saddle Sprung a Bird 15. The Night Was Wide 31. Beauty Crowds Me 16. I Cannot Live with You 32. I Sing to Use the Waiting (minor setting) INTERMISSION Funded by the Koret Foundation, this performance is part of Cal Performances’ 2009–2010 Koret Recital Series, which brings world-class artists to our community. Cal Performances’ 2009–2010 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. 4 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 5 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES Notes on The White Election measure at your note. I can only imagine the afflic- for closeness, nine mentions of Calvary, packed tion which has befallen, or is now befalling you....” in this period, are enough to make the case This suggests that she had written him, and that for Wadsworth. mily dickinson (1830–1886) was born and no actual romance had taken place. We do have a Emily had studied voice and piano, and some- Edied in the “Brick House” or “Homestead” her letter from Emily to her Philadelphia friends, the times played at home. A friend remembers: grandfather had built in his heyday as founder of Josiah Hollands, asking that something enclosed Oftentimes, during these visits to the Amherst Academy and Amherst College. Writing be sent on to “our arch friend,” and we have letters Dickinson relatives, father would be awak- and family gave her enough to do. We know 1,775 after his death describing him as her “closest” and ened from his sleep by heavenly music. of her poems and 1,049 of her letters. The tone is “dearest earthly friend.” Emily would explain in the morning, “I playful, the language puzzling, the content pro- Evidence that Wadsworth was the Dim can improvise better at night.” On one found. Only 11 of the poems were published in her Companion, if only in her mind, comes mostly from or two occasions, when not under their lifetime. The survival of so many letters, even so, her poetry itself, as we will see, and from the sec- friendly roof, my father, in paying his re- suggests that her gift had been recognized within ond of the three draft letters addressed to “Master.” spects at the house, would receive a mes- her circle. The rest lay in a chest by her bed, or were Johnson dates these letters to 1858, 1861 and 1862, sage from his cousin Emily saying, “If you mailed with her letters. Her sister Lavinia and a more or less, from her handwriting. Though all of will stay in the next room, and open the few other friends published some of these, at their Emily’s letters are love letters in the wide sense, the folding doors a few inches, I’ll come down own expense, beginning in 1890. Early editions second and third Master letters are implorations. to make music for you.” My father said that sold out, and Emily’s fame was assured. Squabbles The second includes “If it had been God’s will in those early days she seemed like a will- over rights delayed a complete and authentic print- that I might breathe where you breathe…to come o’-the-wisp. ing until the 1959 Harvard Press Variorum, edited nearer than Presbyteries, and nearer than the new by Thomas Johnson. coat that the tailor made....” “Presbyteries” (eccle- Another visitor recalls the Emily was “often at The White Election is meant to tell her story in siastical courts) does not seem to fit at all unless the piano playing weird and beautiful melodies, all her words. It is the story of a poet, and the busi- for Wadsworth, who was America’s most famous from her own inspiration.” Emily herself writes to a ness of poets is to observe and invent. Are her Presbyterian minister after Henry Ward Beecher. friend, “I play the old, odd tunes yet, which used to love poems, among the most desolating in the Neither Bowles nor Lord was Presbyterian, and flit about your head after honest hours.” language, simply inventions? If not, who does she neither showed particular interest in religion. All this inspires the conjecture that Emily may mean? The most likely suggestions include Charles In 1862, Wadsworth became pastor of the First have set her own poems to music, or even conceived Wadsworth, Otis Lord and Samuel Bowles, all Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, re- of some of them as songs in the first place. I have leaders of opinion, all a generation older, and all maining there eight years. The period 1861–1865 is set them, in large part, just as Emily might have if happily married. We might like it to be the hand- Emily’s most productive, if the handwriting analy- her music had found a balance between tradition some and gregarious Bowles, whose Springfield sis is right, and brings her first death/marriage po- and iconoclasm something like that in her poems. Republican published six of her poems. Judge Lord ems. White is decreed in tradition for weddings is an even stronger candidate, since he and Emily and funerals. Emily tells us in these poems that became engaged after his wife died, when she was for her, these two events would be as one. She will Gordon Getty 47 and he 66. But I will argue, as Johnson does, be “born, bridaled, shrouded in a day.” In heaven, that the evidence favors Wadsworth over both, and she will be “dressed to meet you, see, in white.” over the null hypothesis that the “dim companion” The Dim Companion will be “Mine, by the right of those poems was wholly a pretend person. of the White Election…Mine, by the Grave’s They cannot have met often. Wadsworth was Repeal!” It was in this period that Emily began pastor of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in wearing white. Philadelphia, and famous for his sermons. Mark The evidence for Wadsworth in these poems Twain poked fun at his rhetoric. Emily and Lavinia is mainly the reference to Calvary. Calvary is traveled to Washington in 1854 to visit their father mentioned nine times in this period, according to while he served in Congress, and may have met Johnson, and not before. Emily was not religious at Wadsworth then. We know that he visited the any age; she sometimes writes about religion, but Homestead in 1859 and 1880. His one surviving more as a merry critic, except in the love poems, letter to “My Dear Miss Dickenson” [sic], which than as a participant. Although Calvary is a more has not been dated, begins: “I am distressed beyond natural metaphor for suffering than presbyteries 6 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 7 TEXTS TEXTS Gordon Getty (b. 1933) And though the sum was simple A troubadour upon the elm 8. I Should Not Dare to Leave My Friend (c. 1860) The White Election (1981) And pounds were in the land, Betrays the solitude. Texts: Emily Dickinson Still, had it such a value I should not dare to leave my friend; Unto my frugal eye, New children play upon the green, Because, because if he should die That when I could not find it New weary sleep below, While I was gone, and I too late Part One: The Pensive Spring I sat me down to sigh. And still the pensive spring returns, Should reach the heart that wanted me, And still the punctual snow! 1. I Sing to Use the Waiting (c. 1864) I had a crimson robin If I should disappoint the eyes Who sang full many a day, 6. She Bore It (c. 1859) That hunted, hunted so to see I sing to use the waiting, But when the woods were painted, And could not bear to shut until My bonnet but to tie He too did fly away. She bore it till the simple veins They noticed me, they noticed me, And shut the door unto my house, Time brought me other robins, Traced azure on her hand, No more to do have I Their ballads were the same, Till pleading, round her quiet eyes If I should stab the patient faith Still, for my missing troubadour The purple crayons stand.