Garden Songs (2007)
PURCHASE SCORE
Garden Songs
soprano, trumpet, and piano // 7 minutes
Texts From Songs of Experience, by William Blake
Premiere: April 2007
Commissioned by Margot Rood
Program Note:
I have always loved the sound of the trumpet and the soprano, occupying the same acoustic space. Because they inhabit the same register, one may grow out of the other with only a change in timbre. I decided to experiment, myself, with the possibilities offered by these two beautiful instruments. I chose three poems by William Blake, part of his 1794 Songs of Experience. The outer two songs employ a playfulness in both the piano and the trumpet. The middle song, “The Garden of Love,” takes particular advantage of the registral overlap between trumpet and soprano.
Songs
I. Nurse’s Song (1:50)
II. The Garden of Love (3:00)
III. My Pretty Rose Tree (1:30)
Texts:
Nurse’s Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
And you winter and night in disguise.
The Garden of Love
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking the rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.
My Pretty Rose Tree
A flower was offerd to me;
Such a flower as May never bore,
But I said, “I’ve a Pretty Rose-tree,”
And I passed the sweet flower o’er.
Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree,
To tend her by day and by night,
But my Rose turnd away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.