OCA Music: Finding the Right Text

The relationship between music and text is as old as it is rich. From the ancient intoning of religious texts to Kendrick Lamar’s inimitable flow, via the elaborate edifices of Renaissance polyphony, there are many ways open to a contemporary composer to make music from words.  

Usually, there is a special relationship between a composer and a text they are working with. Today’s composers usually work from personal convictions or experiences. It can take a long time to alight on the right poem (if poem it be), one that expresses ideas that chime with your inner thoughts, or that hold images that seem to call for music.

In general, it is assumed that setting a poem – i.e. reworking it so it can be sung – is something akin to an act of validation: every word of the poem must be believed and (earnestly) expressed. This became a problem for me recently when I required a text for a new piece for choir and brass. I was taken by an anonymous text graffitied onto the Sutro Baths in San Francisco but its conclusion – that it becomes ‘necessary’ to view all items/in the world as reflections, all objects as mirrors,/and then move upon this basis’ – appeared to me not entirely founded in the rest of the poem.

I picked another poem, therefore, which also asked what we are to make of the transience of things. In this second work, in the fields, Charlotte Mew focuses on the beauty of ‘things which pass’, particularly in nature, asking if any ‘everlasting thing’ might offer her the same (or greater) experience. 

The two texts are set here concurrently without any particular attempt at their ultimate resolution. I found it invigorating to see the texts as circling round a common theme but with different perspectives.

When setting the anonymous poem, the music lingers over some of the striking images of decay: the reader is told to ‘think how all / of this will be gone / one day/ eaten / and reapplied.’ and that it is ‘also our inescapable / privilidge to rot.’ (The inconsistent spelling is from the original and has been retained in the score). These pungent images are heard chiefly in smearing trombones and close dissonances.

The second part sets the Mew poem for solo voices or small grouping, while the rest of the choir disperses in the space. The text is given a halo of ambient noise as it describes the beauties of the natural world, before the sound too must fade.

Like two jewels set in metal, the piece as a whole is made up of juxtaposition, one that I found creatively inspiring.

Neil’s new piece, things which pass, will be premiered on 17 September at the Glasgow Cathedral Festival.

Links

• Mew poem
• Sutro Baths poem – Page 1 
• Photo by Chikondi Gunde