Wallace Stevens Songs
I. A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts
II. The Snow Man
III. The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Texts by Wallace Stevens
Soprano: Amelia Lavranchuk
Bassoon: Peter Van Zandt Lane
Piano: Alexander Lane
Performed May 2, 2011, Brandeis University Undergraduate Composers Concert
Soprano: Amelia Lavranchuk
Bassoon: Peter Van Zandt Lane
Piano: Alexander Lane
Performed May 2, 2011, Brandeis University Undergraduate Composers Concert
Program Notes
Wallace Stevens Songs (2010-11) are settings of three poems by Wallace Stevens.
The first poem, “A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts,” is written from the perspective of a very narcissistic rabbit. The rabbit is disgusted by the presence of the cat (represented by slinking bassoon lines) as the cat is an “other”, a threat to the rabbit. The rabbit begins to project himself out into the world, seeing the world as something entirely meant for himself. By the end of the poem, the rabbit has literally extended himself to the entire world, and the otherness of the cat is utterly insignificant and meaningless. The music travels through a number of distantly-related keys to represent the rabbit’s boundless desires.
The second poem, “The Snow Man,” is one of Stevens’s most well-known poems, and thought by many to be one of the greatest poems in the English language. Stevens disliked poetry that imbued nature with human characteristics, just as the rabbit in the preceding poem filled the earth with rabbit-ness. Personification masks what nature really is, and turn it into something familiar and human, when in fact nature is essentially neither familiar nor human. One can only truly understand the “nothing” that is nature by looking past these superficial comparisons. The movement begins with long, high piano chords, but as the piece progresses the bassoon and piano begin to imitate the sounds of winter, as well as the singer’s melody. At the end, these imitations are stripped away again.
The third poem, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” depicts a hot and crowded funeral scene, where there seems to be no higher power than the man who serves ice cream. The music is incessant and agitated, and inspired by a minor version of the “Mister Softee” ice-cream truck jingle, which is heard in its full statement in the bassoon in the middle and end of the movement. The happy tune becomes something twisted and morbid.
~Jared Field (2011)
The first poem, “A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts,” is written from the perspective of a very narcissistic rabbit. The rabbit is disgusted by the presence of the cat (represented by slinking bassoon lines) as the cat is an “other”, a threat to the rabbit. The rabbit begins to project himself out into the world, seeing the world as something entirely meant for himself. By the end of the poem, the rabbit has literally extended himself to the entire world, and the otherness of the cat is utterly insignificant and meaningless. The music travels through a number of distantly-related keys to represent the rabbit’s boundless desires.
The second poem, “The Snow Man,” is one of Stevens’s most well-known poems, and thought by many to be one of the greatest poems in the English language. Stevens disliked poetry that imbued nature with human characteristics, just as the rabbit in the preceding poem filled the earth with rabbit-ness. Personification masks what nature really is, and turn it into something familiar and human, when in fact nature is essentially neither familiar nor human. One can only truly understand the “nothing” that is nature by looking past these superficial comparisons. The movement begins with long, high piano chords, but as the piece progresses the bassoon and piano begin to imitate the sounds of winter, as well as the singer’s melody. At the end, these imitations are stripped away again.
The third poem, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” depicts a hot and crowded funeral scene, where there seems to be no higher power than the man who serves ice cream. The music is incessant and agitated, and inspired by a minor version of the “Mister Softee” ice-cream truck jingle, which is heard in its full statement in the bassoon in the middle and end of the movement. The happy tune becomes something twisted and morbid.
~Jared Field (2011)
Texts
A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts (Wallace Stevens)
The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur –
There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;
And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;
Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full
And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,
You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,
You are humped higher and higher, black as stone –
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.
The Snow Man (Wallace Stevens)
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream (Wallace Stevens)
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur –
There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;
And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;
Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full
And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,
You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,
You are humped higher and higher, black as stone –
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.
The Snow Man (Wallace Stevens)
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream (Wallace Stevens)
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.