So I've mentioned Robin before... my lovely friend who was my roommate in college and my accompanist. I don't know if anyone who isn't a singer can really understand the connection that develops between a singer and their accompanist when the match is right. I almost hate to even use the word "accompanist", as it implies that somehow their contribution to the artistic experience is somehow less than that of the singer. I prefer "collaborative artist", but that kinda makes me sound like a douche... however I'd certainly risk douchery by using that term to describe Robin. He died way too young, while his brother and I held his hands. That moment was one of those moments in life that are fixed in my memory, and around which all other experiences revolve.
After a while, my sweet friend Jerry wrote a beautiful song cycle for me. The songs were settings of Walt Whitman poetry, chosen specifically to remember Robin. The songs are arranged in such a way as to chronicle the life of an artist, from birth, to love, to loss, to death. The title of the cycle is "A Clear Midnight", which is also the title of one of the selected poems (all of which are from Leaves of Grass). The text sometimes is set as the entire Whitman poem, and sometimes Jerry used just fragments of the poetry... Whitman's work really lends itself to the use of beautiful and evocative fragments, much like the ancient Greek poet Sappho. The music is lovely, simple, and elegant, reminiscient of a combination of Ned Rorem and Aaron Copland. I've never been able to sing it without becoming a total mess, so I've never performed it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to.
I ran across the score while re-arranging some things in my file cabinet this afternoon. By the time I read the text of the last song, I was awash in tears. One day I'll be able to give this lovely work the artistic distance and focused performance it deserves. Maybe.
A Clear Midnight
Music by Gerald Harvey
Text by Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1900)
Composed in memory of Robin Rakes
1.
The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
2.
Beginning my studies the first step pleased me so much,
The mere fact of consciousness - these forms - the power of motion,
The least insect or animal - the senses - eyesight - love,
The first step, I say, aw'd me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish'd to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in ecstatic songs.
3.
That music
Always round me, unceasing, unbeginning - yet long untaught I did not hear;
A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of day-break I hear,
A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,
A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,
The triumphant tutti - the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins - all these I fill myself
with;
I hear not the volumes of sound merely - I am moved by the exquisite meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to
excel each other in emotion
4.
(A cappella)
I am he that aches with amorous love;
Does the Earth gravitate? Does not allmatter, aching, atract all matter?
So the Body of me to all I meet or know.
5.
Have you learned lessons only of those who admired
you, and were tender with you, and stood aside
for you?
Have you not learned the great lessons of those who
rejected you, and braced themselves against you?
or who treat you with contempt, or dispute
the passage with you?
6.
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love - the pay is certain, one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was unreturn'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
7.
Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,
The ones known, the ones unknown - the ones on the stars,
The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,
Wonders as of those countries - the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be,
Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects;
Such-like, and good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided for in a handful
of space, which I extend my arm and half enclose with my hand,
That contains the start of each and all - the virtue, the germs of all.
8.
And whence and why come you?
We know not whence, (was the answer,)
We only know that we drift here with the rest,
That we linger'd and lagg'd - but were wafted at last and now are here,
To make the passing shower's concluding drops.
9.
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death, and the stars.
