Performers:
Louise Martin, harp
Micaela Haslam, soprano (Synergy Vocals)
Amanda Morrison, soprano (Synergy Vocals)
Words by Gertrude Stein
This setting of excerpts from Gertrude Stein's "Stanzas in Meditation" is a personal meditation on select “Stanzas” and lines from the poem. The poet John Ashbery writes that the story of "Stanzas in Meditation" is a "general, all-purpose model, which each reader can adapt to fit his own set of particulars. The poem is a hymn to possibility; a celebration of the fact that the world exists, that things can happen." These words resonated with me early into my work on this piece. People interpret Stein in all different ways, and this 150-page poem, with its repetition of colorless connecting words ("where," which," "these," have," "about," etc.) and its hazy, abstract sensation of a plot, is no less a canvas for the reader’s projection. The word that occurs most often in the poem is “they,” for as Ashbery writes, this is a poem about “them,” the external world: how the narrator assesses them and asserts her own sense of shifting importance around them. In selecting the excerpts, I wanted to highlight what I felt was a persistent focus on themes related to alienation and identity. I set it for two voices because the nature of the text suggested to me an inner dialogue. I preserved portions of certain Stanzas, while juxtaposing other lines from within the same Stanza as well as lines from different Stanzas (mindful of Stein’s general ‘chronology’). I sought to spotlight what for me were particularly communicative moments – those where the intense frustration of striving to accompany the evolving thought of the character felt rewarded by a fleeting and ultimately illusory glimpse of understanding.
The beginnings of the music actually existed before I encountered the poem. The opening theme that returns obsessively throughout the piece came to mind as I walked across the Yale campus after hearing soprano Rebecca Ringle and harpist Grace Cloutier(the co-commissioners of the piece) perform together. The insistent nature of the motive led me to Stein. Stanzas in Meditation is dedicated to Grace Cloutier, Rebecca Ringle, and Jennifer Black, with love and admiration.
Excerpts from "Stanzas in Meditation"
by Gertrude Stein
Should they call me what they call me
When they come to call on me
And should I be satisfied with all three
When all three are with me
Or should I say can they stay
Or will they stay with me...
All my dear...
They could think let us go...
This is how the hours stand still...
Just when they will they can...
What do I think when I feel...
Why will they like me as they do
(Should they call me what they call me)
Or not as they do
(When they come to call on me)
Why will they praise me as they do
(And should I be satisfied with all three)
Or praise me not as they do...
(When all three are with me)
Why will they disturb me to disturb me not as they do
Why will they have me for mine and do they
Why will I be mine or which can they
For which can they leave it...
There is this difference
I forgive you everything and there is nothing to forgive.
And so I wish they knew I knew
Two and one is two...
This which I explain is where any one will remain
Because I am always what I knew
