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Text:
Kay K. Maves
I
Here
green-blue
sky, earth,
Rolls
away
from me
Arcs
above, below,
matchless
Symmetry.
I I
Understand
this:
Ordered, not
Immoral, Right
or Wrong,
Death for Life
is
Must.
I I I
I accept,
I will bathe
in the
waters
as they flow,
The darkness
ended,
I will rise
I will cleave
to the stars
&emdash;
And their shining
and
my shining
now
are
one.
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Program
notes:
These three short songs were
written in in 1965 while I was Composer in Residence for the
Ford Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina, and premiered at
Shaw University in Raleigh the following year as I accepted
a position as Music Coordinator. The text was written by my
(then) wife Kay.
These three short songs are
consist of a kind of mini-drama: the first song sounds
almost like a child's nursery rhyme, with its childlike
delight in the symmetry of the earth and sky, the second a
more mature almost bitter acceptance of death, and the third
is the final acceptance of life as it is and as it must be
lived.
The opening text about symmetry,
suggest to a symmetric piano part, where upward reaching
notes were balanced by notes moving downward at the same
interval, ending with the voice in the exact
middle.
The second song with its Zen
like simplicity inspired an un-Zen like rippling texture,
and the third text lead me to a dreamy romantic exploration
of widely spaced ranges and textures in the voice and
piano.
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