I. “A Winter’s Spell”
On the old porch swing I set a spell,
Collecting the cicadas’ lulling buzz,
Hazy summer sunset lingering
All lazy, ripe, and heavy on the night.
Far too soon this light will turn to gold,
And fireflies will flee the waning day.
Copper leaves will choke the guttered eaves
As all the signs of summer fade from sight.
Soon the snows shall gather up the green,
A chill wind whistling through the branches bare;
Silences in violet shadows fall,
Reflect, refract through gleaming prismic white.
How shall I endure this winter’s chill,
When blizzard bites the blood and shivers all?
I’ll remember then the spell I set
Upon the old porch swing in summer’s light.
– Charles Anthony Silvestri (commissioned for this piece)
II. “After Harvest”
The gleaning done, the ashen pods and vines,
just twitch and rattle with what’s left behind.
The purple stubble on the fields below
erasing now with patches of first snow.
Cornstalks turn ghostly. Wagon, barn and rake
give up their shapes, and the new shapes they take
no longer presage any human thing.
The wilderness recalls her underling.
We need the strength of all we can endure,
to grant what earth gives up and make it sure.
The twining and the gathering is the easy part
for now the rind is ripe and heavy like the heart.
The liquid light that poured into our flesh
must take us through the night of cold and emptiness
when colors of the world fade into one.
The web of branches stretches till it’s gone.
– Monica Raymond (used with permission)
III. “Many-Splendored Thing”
And there are the dawns and the dusks
when the snow is falling,
when the lights in the villages
take on a fat and gauzy glow,
when the whole prairie world, although dark,
seems somehow aglow,
when the sky above the storm
becomes the particular pale pink
of a prairie rose in bloom.
When the winter sky puts on that face,
the only possible response is to keep silent,
as before any many-splendored thing.
– Paul Gruchow (used with permission)
IV. “Blizzard”
A blizzard races a blizzard,
neither can defeat the other:
now one pulls ahead,
now it is behind the other.
I watch until my eyes tire,
the mind’s world enters my thought:
A blizzard races a blizzard,
neither can defeat the other.
– Juhan Liiv, trans. H.L. Hix and Jüri Talvet (used with permission)
V. “Winter Walk”
The longest night
The brightest moon
The sharpest sting of cold
The barest branch
The hardest earth
My breath the only cloud
And I am out walking to ask the winter moon:
Who will I be when the spring rains come?
The air so still
Smoke rising straight
The snowbanks sleep so deep
The quiet star
The silent night
A lone bird wakes and sings
And I am out walking to hear my heart,
And I am out walking to hear my heart.
– Brian Newhouse (commissioned for this piece)
VI. “Last Night’s Moon”
This morning, the wind and a bent weed
working together…
drawing the shape of last night’s moon in the snow.
– Scott King (used with permission)
From the willow,
melting ice dripped,
from the alder
wet snow slipped.
High on the air came a cry:
I hear, I hear!
I’m coming, I, the spring,
I’m coming, I’m coming!
– Juhan Liiv, trans. Hix and Talvet (used with permission)
VII. “Returning”
I was walking in a dark valley
and above me the tops of the hills
had caught the morning light.
I heard the light singing as it went
among the grass blades and the leaves.
I waded upward through the shadow
until my head emerged,
my shoulders were mantled with the light,
and my whole body came up out of the darkness, and stood
on the new shore of the day.
Where I had come was home,
for my own house stood white
where the dark river wore the earth.
The sheen of bounty was on the grass,
and the spring of the year had come.
– Wendell Berry (used with permission)
I’ve always imagined the winter months as the bottom third of a circle, dipping lowest at the new year and then coming back up to find Spring. There was never any negativity or depression attached to that image, but I do think it’s neat to think about the act of journeying through Winter as a descent of sorts. We dig deep, we nestle ourselves in, we maintain until it’s safe to come out. The texts and music in this cycle touch on that idea–that we have to endure, we have to stay strong through the turning of the year. The images of hibernation and metamorphosis come to mind as well–will we be the same person on the other side? Or do we grow? Do we change?
I wrote “A Winter’s Spell” last of all seven movements. I commissioned Tony Silvestri to write the poetry for this first piece, and not only did I want him to foreshadow images and emotions from the other texts, but I also wanted to include musical motives and themes from the remainder of the cycle. And so we hear hints of what’s to come–the opening piano theme is from “Many-Splendored Thing,” the scalar passages in “Blizzard,” a few instances of the chorus from “Winter Walk,” the grace note figure from “After Harvest,” and the rolling chords in the piano from “Returning.” It’s all in there. In his poem Tony tries to hold on to the warmth of summer as winter descends.
The piano writing in “After Harvest” is sparse and open, signaling the onset of cold and darkness. Monica Raymond’s poem paints a landscape that’s covered in snow, and she talks about how the light and warmth of summer “must take us through the night of cold and emptiness.”
But winter can also take on a beautiful form, as is evidenced in Paul Gruchow’s writing. The music here paints a different perspective on the season. It’s warm, full and rich, and we are asked to take in this scene with a sense of awe, of wonder that elicits a response, simply, of silence.
I was intrigued by the motion and energy in Juhan Liiv’s poem “Blizzard.” Often times in a snow storm we are able to “see” the wind as flakes swirl around our world and around each other. That fierce wind is most present in the right hand of the piano, but also in the repeating, alternating rhythmic ostinato in the soprano and tenor lines. Of the poem, translator Jüri Talvet says that Liiv “imagines a parallel between (cosmic) nature and the mind’s world (human culture); the same blizzards are racing one another in the world of culture...And it is true...A trend claims its superiority, then falls, and so on eternally...”
In 2014 Brian Newhouse sent me a piece he had written, and I asked if he would be willing to take two lines from that piece and expand it into a poem for this cycle. He agreed and came up with the wonderful poem “Winter Walk.” I imagine this poem falling in the middle of the season, at the peak (or the bottom of my imagined circle, as I mentioned above) of the journey through the darkness. And here we have the main idea of the cycle. The cold and quiet offer us a chance to look inside of ourselves. And if we listen and decide to follow our hearts, who will we be when we come through on the other side? I imagine that we come out as better, stronger versions of ourselves.
When I was gathering texts together, I kept reading Scott King and Juhan Liiv’s two small poems as one narrative, so I set them as one song here. They work seamlessly together! The idea of two working together toward a common goal led me to collaboration, so I asked my friend, violinist Sara Pajunen, to read these texts and write a wordless melody to go along with them. I improvised a second melody under her line, and the bones of the piece were created. And here, at the end of this movement, we get the first promise of Spring.
“Returning” completes our journey. Wendell Berry uses these images of emerging: from under to above, from shadow into light, from quiet into singing. I loved the contrast here between the new (the fresh spring grass), and a familiar scene. Those warm rolling piano chords sound out and we know we are home. Octave doubling in the voices gives us solidarity and strength until we arrive “on the new shore of the day.”
It was a delight to compose this cycle, and my deep thanks go out to the poets who wrote for me, and those who gave their permission for me to use their work. I also wouldn’t have been able to write this without the encouragement of my 42 commissioning choirs who supported me in the creation of the work.
- Timothy C. Takach
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