Bird Songs
- soprano (in a nest of percussion) (13')
Lucy Shelton
Bird Songs
Poetry by Rabindranath Tagore
Premiere: ModFest, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, NY (Jan, 2016)
Commissioned by Lucy Shelton
PROGRAM NOTES:
Seven of Rabindranath Tagore's poems from Stray Birds are the texts for my Bird Songs, composed for Lucy Shelton. The "nest of percussion" is a collection of instruments I've either made or have gathered on my journeys (in true bird-like fashion). Upon request of the Folger Consort, I composed a variation, Bird Songs (for 3 birds), which reimagines 4 of the original 7 songs for 3 voices with percussion accompaniment. As in the original Bird Songs, the singers play the percussion.
Lucy Shelton: “When I called my friend and colleague Susan Botti to ask for a new composition… I requested that it include percussion. She immediately played some sounds for me from the exotic instruments perched in her home studio, and suggested favorite poems from Tagore's “Stray Birds”. I was ecstatic with these sources of inspiration! Botti had collected four Prayer Bowls while in Taipei in 2010 and now they would become central to “Bird Songs” (her settings of seven short poems featuring birds and nature). “Listen, my heart...” is the centerpiece. The haunting sound world is a mix of the complex tuning of the bowls, contrasted with other small percussion instruments (tuned and untuned) and the jangle of two wind-chimes made by the composer from keys and various small metal objects. Botti asks the voice to play with the ambiguous tunings, singing into and around the given pitches. It was a wonderful challenge to inhabit this unique sound world, with its complete range from whispered speech to full-throated song, as well as opportunities for improvisation. In “Bird Songs" I play all the percussion instruments – with the two sets of chimes behind me and a table in front of me with the smaller instruments and the four Prayer Bowls. I sing from within a special nest of evocative sounds.”
from Stray Birds (Tagore)
1) Silence will carry your voice like the nest that holds the sleeping birds.(#155)
2) The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird (#35)
3) Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it makes love to you (#13)
4) The cricket’s chirp and the patter of rain come to me through the dark,
like the rustle of dreams from my past youth. (#198)
5) Roots are the branches down in the earth. Branches are roots in the air. (#103)
6) The bird-song is the echo of the morning light back from the earth. (#245)
7) Light in my heart the evening star of rest and then let the night whisper to me of love. (#274)
Bird Songs (for 3 Birds)
