music
compositions » Seasons - for flute cello and piano - award winning
Summer Dies | On a Fall Day | Winter | Footsteps of Spring
A 2011 recipient of the Athena Festival Chamber Music Award and Residency at Murray State University in KY.
I was just beginning to compose a flute trio when I stumbled across one of the “Winter Poems” of Chaim Nachman Bialik, Israel’s national poet laureate. The poem felt just like the music I was writing. I fell in love with the mood of the winter he described, and went on to search his poetry for the three remaining seasons to derive further inspiration. The remaining poems were not written in the same time period, nor were they written sequentially, but I chose to combine them into a unit of their own. As I was reading the poems and simultaneously composing, I felt as though the compositions were actually being influenced by the progression of the text. The music was effectively an “underscore” to the poem, knowing that it will parallel the absent “voice” of the reader. Three of the poems exist in translation and were kindly provided to me by the Bialik Institute in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, the “Fall” poem has never been translated from the original Hebrew. It is a poem not about autumn, but more about the fall in Bialik’s heart as he witnesses the aging of his elderly mother and reminiscences of her holding his hand as a child. I hope you will enjoy my “year” as much as I enjoyed writing it.
See right for The Poems of Chaim Nachman Bialik (Translated by Ruth Nevo)
Download /files/Seasons-winter-web.mp3
Download Excerpt from Score »
To purchase, Contact Ayala »
The summer dies in gold and amber.
Purple mass
of fallen leaves in gardens
and sunset clouds
that tumble in their blood.
The orchard empties. Only lone men
one or two girls
watch with yearning eyes
the last long flight
of storks in gathering flocks.
The heart is orphaned. Soon rain
will tap the window
Have you checked your winter shoes?
Mended jackets?
Go get the potatoes in.
Oh freeze me, frost!
Scorch, burn, sear, pierce.
Congeal my breath upon my lip
cast your iron in my blood
Make my breast of hammered steel
lest it burst from pent up force.
Oh riot, frost!
Scorch, burn, sear, pierce.
Brace the muscles of my arm
pen my breath up in my throat.
Sparkle in the dust of noon
Dominate and take command.
A different wind is blowing. Skies grow tall,
Bright distances unfold in limpid space.
Spring treads the hills, and in the village square
The earth dawn exhales a misty warmth,
And budding shoots appear upon wet trees.
A different wind is blowing through the world.
It is not yet full light, not trumpet call,
But unassuming, delicate, virgin song,
And soft light spreading imperceptibly
Until a flood of hoarded life bursts forth
in spendthrift vigor of its first new youth,
and all the breeding power of fruitfulness.
How sweet the gentle light, how sweet the wind!
Faces are festive, laughter everywhere;
Eye meets eye in blithe companionship
While golden cords link all created things.
Soon all that lavish youth will spill abroad
In foam of flowers, a white aureole.
Soon in white flowers my youth will overflow-
My new-found youth-entangled in old dreams,
for through them too blow currents of spring air.
To my full heart I will give utterance,
With shining tears expel my black despair.
A different wind is blowing through the world.
