The angstiest song/section of the piece….
Alas! my
heart, where is thy absent God?Arise and
search, nor languish hopeless here,
His sacred
word invites me to his feet.
The voice
of mercy, O be the heavenly accents spoke to me!God of my
life,
O speak and
give me comfort(O let my
soul recall her comforts past)
–words from Anne Steele: ‘Desiring
the gracious presence of God’
…after this, after a Period Of Silence, it goes into the Psalm (below).
Live recording from the concert in November that I just got back!! This is only the very last section of a longer piece and to some extent the audience is supposed to hear it in context because it is very pretty and full of relief and consummation buuuut on the other hand. it is very pretty 🙂 you might like it.
The words are adapted from Psalm 5. Every other section in the full piece was from a poem by a woman, and while this psalm may not have been… It can still be ours.
I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy
Harken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God
My voice shalt thou hear in the morning.
Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness.
For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness
But thou wilt bless the righteous
With favour wilt thou compass her as with a shield.
I encountered in the street a poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes. Water trickled through his boots, and the stars through his soul.
*
Oh joy of the birds! It because they have nests that they sing.
*
Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.
*
On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love.
*
True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its desires and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely small. Nothing suffices for love: we have happiness, we desire paradise: we possess paradise, we desire heaven.
*
“Does she still come to the gardens?
“No. She has moved away.”
“Where has she gone to dwell?”
“She did not say.”
*
What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one’s soul.
*
If you are a stone, be adamant. If you are a plant, be the tender plant. If you are man, be love.
*
What love commences can be finished by God alone.
*
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. It is a point of fire: immortal, infinite— which nothing can contain, which nothing can extinguish.
words from Les Misérables.
recording of my piece ‘Aphorisms’ from last year – not a wonderful quality recording, but listenable! for 2-part women’s choir.
The opening theme to Yuri!!! on Ice, on piano and vox
All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired
I call: “Where are you?”
But there is only the oak-tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you? I go about searching.Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me all these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet, Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.
Madonna of the Evening Flowers (Amy Lowell)
~draft~
I’m not really a soprano! but I love this poem, and Amy Lowell.