“In my early college years, I began to explore American poets that had been introduced to us in high school. It was exciting, and even shocking, to discover the range, power, and real messages of these writers. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were the most life-changing. But William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, e.e. cummings, and Carl Sandburg were not far behind.
In Carl Sandburg’s collection Smoke and Steel, the images of speed, power, and outcry have a powerful effect. One of the poems, “Four Preludes On Playthings of the Wind,” was especially riveting. It seemed like a kind of honky-tonk “Ozymandias”— a mixture of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Vachel Lindsay.
In 1976, I did a rough piano version. The mixture of musical styles was there from the beginning. In 2003, spending the summer in Santa Fe, I brought the sketches into a more continuous form. In 2015–16 I expanded it into a piece for solo soprano, backup singers, bar band, and chamber orchestra. Vocally, the piece is inspired by Sarah Vaughan, Leontyne Price, James Brown, and Igor Stravinsky—all artists I had the pleasure of knowing. I realized that the piece would be perfect for Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, and she became my collaborator in bringing it to life. I am also indebted to Bruce Coughlin for aiding me in realizing the score.
Measha Brueggergosman in rehearsal with MTT. Photo: Stefan Cohen
“Playthings verges back and forth in time and in style. The same materials are taken up by a chamber orchestra and a bar band, both developing the material in their own ways. The chamber orchestra is around twenty-strong, the bar band consists of two saxes, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, trumpet, trombone, synthesizer, and drums.
The piece opens with a bluesy clarinet solo accompanied by the chamber orchestra, which gradually introduces the main motives of the piece. The voice enters, half-speaking Sandburg’s introductory line, “The past is a bucket of ashes,” punctuated by the sound of a cash register. The bar band comes crashing in, playing the same music that the chamber orchestra played but in the style of late 1950s rockabilly. From there on the music swerves, following the text between various lyrical, pop, and modernist styles. Gradually, the two instrumental ensembles become more enmeshed and mournfully intense. A final post-apocalyptic party scene careens into a breakdown before the lyrical mood of the opening returns.
—Michael Tilson Thomas
Playthings of the wind we may all be, but that’s all the more reason to live it up while we can, and Tilson Thomas lives it up big time. […]You could spend the half hour the songs last counting the different musical influences — Sarah Vaughan, John McLaughlin, Bernstein, Berg, Gershwin, Ellington, doo-wop, bebop and on and on.”
—Los Angeles Times
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind made for both an arresting centerpiece and a revealing portrait of the composer. […] a mirror that reflects Thomas’s multitudes.”
Washington Post
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind
The past is a bucket of ashes.
1
The woman named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it and fastens at last the last braid and coil and puts the hairpin where it belongs and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. What of it? Let the dead be dead.
2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city, the greatest nation, nothing like us ever was.
3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.
And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened … and the only listeners left now
… are … the rats … and the lizards.
And there are black crows
crying, “Caw, caw,”
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar and the strips on the panels were gold and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. And the only listeners now are … the rats … and the lizards.
4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers of the rats.
And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.
—Carl Sandburg, from Smoke and Steel (1922)
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind — Carl Sandburg, from Smoke and Steel (1922)
Notable Performances
San Francisco Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
The Britt Orchestra
Teddy Abrams, conductor
New World Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
National Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor