Poems of Emily Dickinson

Renée Fleming and MTT after the premiere of “Poems of Emily Dickinson.” Photo: Kristen Loken

“These songs were written for and inspired by Reneé Fleming.

In late 2000 she told me about a project she was developing with the actress Claire Bloom and the director Charles Nelson Reilly which included Dickinson’s letters, poems and song-settings by various composers. In the next few days two came into my mind and I sent them to Reneé. ‘Fame’ and ‘Of God We Ask One Favor’ got their premieres a few weeks later. I then began the process of setting the other poems for their premiere in 2002.

I selected shorter poems that have an acerbic or wry cast. I appreciate the range of Dickinson’s poetry. There are many with sardonic, ironic, and cutting observations and social criticisms. The poems also express a profound appreciation for being alive. Somehow her isolation gave her an essential distance to see clearly, to perceive reality and the essential nature of things. Such qualities are truly enduring.

In Nature Studies, the three poems ‘To make a Prairie,’ ‘How Happy is the Little Stone,’ and ‘The Spider Holds a Silver Ball’ all flow together as a continuous song. At the end, the first poem is recapitulated with strands of music that come from the other two. This movement is also a play on words, with ‘Nature Studies’ inviting a musical interpretation of the word ‘studies,’ as in ‘études.’ Each is based on a famous technical study relating to some instrument. The first is based on Dohnányi’s piano étude for extended arpeggios. The second on numerous Czerny or Hanon piano studies involving substitute finger passages. The third refers to a trombone étude involving extended range by Robert Marsteller, who was the principal trombonist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic when I was growing up. You can hear this particular étude still played backstage by brass players to this day. In my setting it is played by diverse instruments.

I imagined that for the first song, she was in a boat. In the second, she whispers to herself a wry commentary on a pedantic Sunday school teacher. In the third, she’s in church, listening to a hymn. In the fourth, she is in her own space. In the fifth, she is outside, watching a sunset. In the sixth, the “étude” piece, she’s practicing. In the seventh, I picture her by herself, outside, at a distance, being very certain of who she is.

Each song relates to a musical genre that has to do with each of those places. The first song in a boat is something like a sea chantey. The second – teaching a class – has an odd children’s flavor, maybe reminiscent of Stravinsky or Mussorgsky, especially of Mussorgsky’s The Nursery. The third is very specifically inspired by organ music played by a small New England organ, wheezing and in such poor shape that some of the notes don’t sound. From Dickinson’s perspective, the fourth would be a futurist setting because it’s rather jazzy. Let’s call it ‘Emily Dickinson Reincarnated as a Hat-Check Girl in a 1930s Supper Club.’ The fifth depicts nature, and so the sound-world is that of a tree being felled in the forest. You could consider that she is offering a larger commentary on what nature is. The sixth involves the sounds of practicing, as when you are practicing studies at an instrument and your mind often goes to the most amazing places while your fingers are involved in note repetition. The seventh is an ardent hymn of her own creation.”

—Michael Tilson Thomas

There is a transparency about Michael Tilson Thomas’ treatment of Dickinson’s words, a sense that he is opening a window for the listener into the poet’s world. The songs are [expertly] written – they give evidence at every moment of Thomas’ technical mastery. The writing for small orchestra is wizardly, full of felicitous touches and subtle invention; the melodies are shapely and evocative, the tonal harmonies exquisitely shaded. Thomas has acknowledged debts to Mahler, Schubert and Stravinsky, among others. But to these ears it seems clear that the overarching spirit is that of Copland… Copland’s voice is most explicitly audible in the cycle’s most personal – and most radiant – utterance, the expansive triptych that Thomas has title “Nature Studies.” Here Thomas combines three of Dickinson’s poems (“To make a prairie,” “How happy is the little Stone,” and “The Spider holds a Silver Ball”) against the backdrop of three repetitive musical exercises for practicing – and like the industrious spider, turns these dull spinnings into shimmery splendor. The opening music, which returns to close the song, is [based on] Copland (whose wide-open harmonies created what is still the recognizable sound of “prairies”), and the rest of the song includes more than passing nods to the older master. Yet the whole thing is crafted with such fearless integrity – its beauty risking sentimentality without succumbing – that the song leaves its model far behind.”

San Francisco Chronicle

Renée Fleming and MTT. Photo: Abdiel Thorne

Text

1. Down Time’s Quaint Stream

Down Time’s quaint stream
Without an oar
We are enforced to sail
Our Port a secret
Our Perchance a Gale
What Skipper would
Incur the Risk
What Buccaneer would ride
Without a surety from the Wind
Or schedule of the Tide—

2. The Bible

The Bible is an antique Volume —
Written by faded men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres —
Subjects — Bethlehem —
Eden — the ancient Homestead —
Satan — the Brigadier —
Judas — the Great Defaulter —
David — the Troubadour—
Sin — a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist —
Others must resist,
Others…..must resist.
Boys that “believe” are very lonesome —
Other Boys are “lost” —
Had but the Tale a warbling Teller —
All the Boys would come —
Orpheus’ Sermon captivated —
It did not condemn —

3. Of God we ask one favor

Of God we ask one favor,
That we may be forgiven—
For what, he is presumed to know—
The Crime, from us, is hidden—
Immured the whole of Life
Within a magic Prison
We reprimand the Happiness
That too competes with Heaven.

4. Fame

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer’s Corn—
Men eat of it and die.

5. The Earth Has Many Keys

The Earth has many keys—
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula—
Beauty—is Nature’s Fact—
But Witness for Her Land—
And Witness for Her Sea—
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me—

6. Nature Studies

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
The spider holds a Silver Ball
In unperceived Hands—
And dancing softly to Himself
His Yarn of Pearl—unwinds—
He plies from Nought to Nought—
In unsubstantial Trade—
Supplants our Tapestries with His—
In half the period—
An Hour to rear supreme
His Continents of Light—
Then dangle from the Housewife’s Broom—
His Boundaries—forgot—

7. Take all away from me

Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy,
And I am richer then than all my Fellow Men—
Ill it becometh me to dwell so wealthily
When at my very Door are those possessing more,
In abject poverty—

San Francisco Chronicle

Renée Fleming and MTT. Photo: Abdiel Thorne

Text

Poems of Emily Dickinson

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