Iseult Speaks (Mezzo-Soprano and Piano)

Jessica Rudman

Iseult Speaks

for Mezzo-soprano and Piano with Text by Elizabeth Hamilton

2016 ca. 36:00

Iseult Speaks

for Mezzo-soprano (range: A3-G5) and Piano

Performance Notes

• Grace notes should be played before the beat.

• Rolled chords should be played on the beat.

• Tapping on the body of the piano is notated with an x notehead and a text indication.

• Breaks between movements should be short. Movements marked “Attacca" must be played without a break, and other movements may be performed with or without a break as desired.

• Individual songs and/or any combinations of songs may be excerpted as needed. If non-adjacent songs are performed in succession, Attacca markings may be ignored.

Program Notes

Iseult Speaks is an extended song cycle based on a retelling of the Tristan/Iseult myth. For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, the basic outline—and there are many variations on this skeleton—is that Tristan is supposed to bring Iseult to marry his uncle, but on the way they fall in love, usually because of a potion they accidentally ingest. Portrayals of Iseult range from passive cypher to tragic heroine to wanton seductress, but she is almost always cast as a onedimensional accessory to Tristan.

Elizabeth Hamilton’s evocative and provocative poems reexamine the legend from Iseult’s point of view, here somewhat omniscient and shaded with a modern sensibility that links the tale to contemporary experiences. The text touches on questions of gender roles, societal pressure, and personal power as the narrator contemplates her life, rages against the unfairness of fate, wallows in memories of physical affection, condemns Tristan for his inaction, and vacillates between confidence, insecurity, hope, and despair.

It has been a pleasure setting these gorgeous poems, and I want to thank Elizabeth for trusting me with her words!

Composer Contact Information

Jessica Rudman

Email: jessica_rudman@yahoo.com

Website: www.jessicarudman.com

1. Iseult Speaks

What we have is myth but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’ve known that from the start, knew it even when you married another and silence stretched to fit distance. Magic is a bitter thing, Tristan. Are you surprised to hear me say this? More fool you, then. What you perceive as gentleness, as generosity, is really just resignation. Yours are the only hands I can feel. If I survive you, my skin will starve.

2. Iseult Sings

A shoulder here, ankle there. His hands wrapped in my hair. One finger, two finger, three. Beggar, balm, barren me.

3. Iseult Swims

In the alternate story, I jump when the wind dies. Above the white-caps, my head, a glimmer of gold, bobbing there, and then there, in the green-black waves. I wade to shore, blue-lipped, breath heaving, with wet skirts wrapped around my legs — a maiden who saves only herself and leaves you behind to die of thirst in a stalled wooden box of a boat.

4. Iseult Skewers

Sometimes I wonder if you even realize what you are: the captor caught in his own net, the warrior who meant to dump the maiden on shore for another man’s amusement and then ended up stuck with her for life. All this ache, all this useless desire — what’s the point of a knight with more honor than courage? I suggest you hand me the sword. At least I’m willing to use it.

Iseult Sees

The future, with its troublesome noise, unfurls. This is the power of myth. Here are those who came later, wearing their worn stories. Those doomed Italian lovers. The knight and his ridiculous hair shirt. The guilt-ridden queen. Tragic, sure, but they’ve got nothing on us. At least they had free will. But did they escape doom? No. They learned nothing from our mistakes, not even how to avoid the deaths that come like twin stars, one burst of light, followed by the other.

5.

6. Iseult Speaks

This is what I know about choice: mine was always limited, even before the potion. Yours, less so, simply by virtue of being a man, but eventually you, too, were stuck. Still, if we were being honest,

we’d have to admit that love is never about choice. The only difference magic makes is it removes the possibility of making a different choice. But don’t take my word for it. Build another life, brick by brick.

I don’t even have to raise my eyes to knock it down.

7. Iseult Sparks

Your wife might be the one with the white hands, but my candied fists call you back to the forest where you wade waist deep in the tinder of my body. Friend, I was not born for this, but I confess this possession, if we must call it that, has its merits. Your hands are the ones that matter, after all. Winged, lit. The proof pours from the floor of my body. Ah, lovely goner, dark wind. Come back. Make ash.

8. Iseult Stagnates

The birds cannot compete with my longing, but when twilight settles over the distant treetops and the umber air feathers with song, I know they have heard my lament and call from their branches, singing up to the sky, singing the same song their whole lives.

9. Iseult’s Short-Breathed Sestina

What kind of woman am I to submit to this empty breath? His absence a lone gull wheeling within, noisy with hunger.

This is not a complaint about hunger, which is worse than longing, but I submit that I will end in grief’s rattling shell, alone

as a last breath, tenderness out on loan to one who does not remember hunger’s sharp demands or desire’s command: submit!

Submissive, I hang by my own, lone thread.

10.

Iseult Storms

I blame you for absolutely everything: Every hour of absence that turns bird song blank, all unwanted advances, my unnatural attachment to the blind adoration of dogs, the feel of thunder through my feet, what is left on the table when the King finishes, the wasted remains of a woman.

11. Iseult Speaks

Eventually, I donned the hair shirt myself. I know — absurd, especially after I mocked poor Lancelot for his atonement. I felt I had no choice, but not because love never excuses sin. I reject Catholic guilt. I prefer Lawrence and his crude ode to sensuality, his We fucked a flame into being, which encapsulates, it seems, our every hour together. No, if I repent anything, it is not the passion but each eternal hour I forsook passion. In other words, the hours I forsook you.

12. Interlude

13. Iseult Steels (Herself)

If only this would end the way they say it will — our hearts stopped after a few years of torment. We know better. Our curse is to live without each other for a full lifetime, until the only thing left of us is our longing — a lone stem, green in a frost-bitten field.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Iseult Speaks: “What we have is myth” — 1

2. Iseult Sings — 6

3. Iseult Swims — 17

4. Iseult Skewers — 25

5. Iseult Sees — 30

6. Iseult Speaks: “This is what I know about choice”— 38

7. Iseult Sparks — 44

8. Iseult Stagnates — 51

9. Iseult’s Short-Breathed Sestina — 55

10. Iseult Storms — 62

11. Iseult Speaks: “Eventually…” — 68

12. Interlude — 74

13. Iseult Steels (Herself) — 75

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