Liederabend LIV: Ten Premiere Performances

Aria Shi | I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

Emily Dickinson

Jiaqi Wang | The Rose in the Deeps of His Heart

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The Rose in the Deeps of His Heart

All things uncomely and broken,
all things worn-out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway,
the creak of a lumbering cart,

The heavy steps of the ploughman,
splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms
a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things
is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew
and sit on a green knoll apart,

With the earth and the sky and the water,
remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms
a rose in the deeps of my heart.

William Butler Yeats

Brooks Clarke | The Tell-Tale Heart

True! Nervous...
It is impossible...
 

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True! --nervous —…. dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? ….. Hearken! and observe how…... calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none…...I loved the old man……. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!  He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so…..I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Edgar Allan Poe

Alexander Matheson | The New Colossus/Hermes of the Way

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The New Colossus/Hermes of the Way

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.

Emma Lazarus, from The New Colossus

The hard sand breaks,
And the grains of it
Are clear as wine.
Far off over the leagues of it,
The wind...
...more than the many-foamed ways
Of the sea,
I know him
Of the triple path-ways,
Hermes,
Who awaiteth.
…..Welcoming wayfarers,
He whom the sea-orchard
Shelters from the west,

H.D., from Hermes of the Ways

Ian Wiese | Sleeping with the Dead

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Sleeping with the Dead

They come into our dreams
as though they have the right to move
again the arms we know are ash
buried, scattered, kept
in polished urns on old pianos
draped with tapestry fringe.
They laugh at us, or say
You never knew my eyes were blue,
or smooth our hair with ivory combs
plucked from fairy tales.
We turn, and mutter, and turn
again, trying not to see
the way their faces catch the sun
and offer us thin rainbows.
So sure they are of our heat's welcome,
so sure they are we live for them,
they light their pipes, kick off tight shoes,
ask for coffee - sugar, no cream-
and never let on they've forgotten our names
as they sip and sip at fragrant steam.

Katharyn Howd-Machan 

Caleb J. Abner | The Masque of Anarchy

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The brackets indicate where the composer has given the performer options to replace Shelley’s original text.

The Masque of Anarchy

Clothed with a Bible
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Clothed in arms like blood and flame
Each waving a bloody sword
Tearing up and trampling down
Till they came to [______]
crying
‘Thou art King, and God, and Lord,
to thee we bow, [_______]
Tearing up and trampling down
Till they came to [______]
And then ____, the [_____]
Bowed and grinned to everyone,
As well as if his [____]
Had cost [______] to the nation
They are dying whilst I speak

In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many, they are few
[____] ye for them are made to work
And have such pay as just keeps life
From day to day
Your will bent for their nourishment,
To be all that [___] made of ye,
Savage men or wild beasts
Would endure not as ye do—
But such ills they never knew.
For gold thy righteous laws are sold.
‘Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold,
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold’

Rise like lions out of slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many, they are few

[_______________________________]

Adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy

Flora Sun | Naniwazuni

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Naniwazuni

難波津に咲くやこの花冬ごもりいまを春べと咲くやこの花

Wani

In Naniwa Bay,
now the flowers are blossoming.
After lying dormant all winter,
now the spring has come and the flowers are blossoming.

Yunqi Li | Space

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Will it never be possible
to separate you from your greyness?
Must you be always sinking backward
into your grey-brown landscapes—and trees
always in the distance, always against a grey sky?
                          Must I be always
moving counter to you? Is there no place
where we can be at peace together
and the motion of our drawing apart
be altogether taken up?
                                 I see myself
standing upon your shoulders touching 
a grey, broken sky—
but you, weighted down with me,
yet gripping my ankles,—move
                          laboriously on,
where it is level and undisturbed by colors.

William Carlos Williams, A portrait in greys

Marie Carroll | tiñendo con tu amor

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Da-Yu Liu | Since There Is No Escape

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Since there is no escape

Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.

Sara Teasdale