Songs from Ort

LISA BIELAWA

Songs from Ort for women’s chorus

2014 Texts by Christian Hawkey & Uljana Wolf Erasures from “Sonnets from the Portuguese” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and its translation by Rainer Maria Rilke

commissioned by the Cornell University Chorus, Robert Isaacs, Conductor

©2014 by Lisa Bielawa

LISA BIELAWA

Songs from Ort (2014) commissioned by the Cornell University Chorus, Robert Isaacs, Conductor

for women’s chorus duration c.5 minutes TEXTS Sonnet XXI from Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1849 Say over again and yet once over again That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated Should seem ‘a cuckoo-song,’ as thou dost treat it, Remember never to the hill or plain, Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain, Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed!

Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt’s pain Cry…speak once more…thou lovest! Who can fear Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll – Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me – toll The silver iterance! – only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

German translation, Rainer Maria Rilke, 1907 Sag immer wieder und noch einmal sag, daß du mich liebst. Obwohl dies Wort vielleicht, so wiederholt, dem lied des Kuckucks gleicht wie du’s empfandest: über Tal und Hag und Feld und Abhang, beinah allgemein und überall, mit jedem Frühling tönend.

Geliebter, da im Dunkel redet höhnend ein Zweifelgeist mich an; ich möchte schrein: <Sag wieder, daß du liebst.> Wer ist denn bang, daß zu viel Sterne werden: ihrem Gang sind Himmel da. Und wenn sich Blumen mehren, erweitert sich das Jahr. Laß wiederkehren der Kehrreim deiner Liebe. Doch entzieh mir ihre Stille nicht. Bewahrst du sie?

XXI from Sonne from ort, Christian Hawkey & Uljana Wolf, 2012

Special thanks to Christian Hawkey and Uljana Wolf for sharing this intriguing and beautiful work with me, reprinted here with permission from Kookbooks and book designer Andreas Tรถpfer.

Program Note “Songs from Ort” is inspired by the collaborative experiments in poetic “erasure” of husbandand-wife poets Christian Hawkey (American) and Uljana Wolf (German). Their recent book, Sonne from ort, is (according to the dust jacket) “a bi-lingual collaborative erasure of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ and their en face 1907 German translations by Rainer Maria Rilke…These love poems to Robert Browning were written between 1845 and 1846 and published in 1850. The title purposefully suggested they were translations from the Portuguese in order to veil their personal content.”

Hawkey’s erasure (in English, of the Browning), and Wolf’s erasure (in German, of the Rilke) of Sonnet XXI appear in this musical setting. First I set the erasure words in a kind of high relief of rich harmonies and more lyrical text-setting, over the complete Browning sonnet AND its German translation by Rilke, in a more monotone, rhythmic, speech-like setting. After this treatment is complete, the piece returns to the erasures alone, first in German and then in English, without the source latticework of the complete poem – revealing Hawkey’s and Wolf’s new syntax and meanings: the art of the erasure poem.

In order to explore further the concept of “erasure” and what it might mean in musical terms, I turned to a third couple: Clara and Robert Schumann. Like Browning, Clara Schumann created offerings of love for her husband, in the form of solo piano Romances. Like the Brownings, Clara and her husband (also named Robert) were artists in the same medium. In composing “Songs from Ort,” I began my own process with musical erasures on these Romances by Clara Schumann, selecting only brief glimpses of her music and creating the “high relief” of the Wolf/Hawkey settings entirely from Schumann’s pitches. As with the erasure poems, Schumann’s notes undergo a total transformation of harmonic syntax and meanings in their new setting.

Poems misleadingly named translations are transformed 50 years later through translation, and again one hundred years after that, through erasure. Robert Schumann sometimes published Clara’s music under his own name, bringing yet another wrinkle into this dense game of misattribution. Whose piece is this? Now it is yours!

Songs from Ort Commissioned by the Cornell University Chorus, Robert Isaacs, Conductor Christian Hawkey & Uljana Wolf Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Rainer Maria Rilke

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