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Morten Lauridsen

A Backyard Universe

Three Songs on Poems by Harold Witt

for Tenor and Piano

In 1965 tenor Delton Shilling and pianist Cinda Goold Redman premiered A Backyard Universe: Three Songs on Poems by Harold Witt, which was to become the first of my many vocal cycles to follow. I was struck then as I am now by Witt’s colorful imagery, his deft handling of structure and the lyrical quality of his verse. Mr. Witt composed these poems about his children, Emily and Eric, and their activities—learning ballet (“Girl in a world that now begins to spin, twirling on toes, in tights, your first ballet,…”), celebrating a birthday (“My son is three today, in walnut shade ten children blow harmonicas,…”) and exploring their backyard universe (“Comedian of love, my wind-willed boy has entered the bees’ abode, the danger yard of roses,…”). My musical settings aimed at capturing the charm and vitality of Witt’s delightful poems and are dedicated to three superb vocal artists who have championed my songs over the years. —Morten Lauridsen The Storybook Cottage, Los Angeles December, 2012

Harold Witt (1923-1995) published hundreds of poems and 13 books of poetry over a 50-year career. A native Californian, Witt received degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan. His poems appeared regularly in major magazines including The New Yorker, Saturday Review and Atlantic Monthly and are well represented in poetry anthologies. His own books include The Death of Venus, Beasts in Clothes, The Snow Prince, American Lit, Winesburg by the Sea, The Light At Newport and Surprised by Others at Fort Cronkhite. He received many honors for his work, including the James Phelan and Hopwood Awards, the Pushcart Prize and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. A writer of fiction as well as poetry and drama, he was a collage artist, filmmaker and reference librarian at San Jose State University and the Washoe County Library in Reno.

The music of Morten Lauridsen occupies a permanent place in the standard vocal repertoire of the Twenty-First Century. His eight vocal cycles (Lux Aeterna, Les Chansons des Roses, Madrigali: Six ‘FireSongs’ on Italian Renaissance Poems, A Winter Come, Cuatro Canciones, A Backyard Universe, Nocturnes and Mid-Winter Songs on Poems by Robert Graves), instrumental works, art songs and series of motets (including O Magnum Mysterium) are performed throughout the world and have been recorded on over two hundred CDs, several of which have received Grammy nominations. Mr. Lauridsen served as Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1995-2001 and is currently Distinguished Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. An award-winning documentary by filmmaker Michael Stillwater, Shining Night – A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen, was released in 2012 (songwithoutborders.net). In 2006, Morten Lauridsen was named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2007 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest artistic award in the United States, by the President in a White House ceremony “for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power, and spiritual depth.”

For more about Morten Lauridsen: www.peermusicClassical.com

Texts

1. Girl

3. Boy

Girl in a world that now begins to spin, twirling on toes, in tights, your first ballet, girl in a whirl of equilibrium, revolving stormy planet blue with moon that, copernican, turns around the sun; sauntering daughter who can also run meadows of morning or by the evening sea leave in fading sand your shadow feet, who fall and try again in a small room lessons of limitation, danilova discipline of rigid digits, an alphabet that tends, curved like a clock or turning world, toward Z, moving through Junes of sun to winter moons and then curves back to April A again, girl in a world that is not flat but bends— the dancer, not the dance, begins and ends.

Comedian of love, my wind-willed boy has entered the bees’ abode, the danger yard of roses, his second spring to toedance with the wasps. Now apple boughs explode their buds of odor; like emerald toys the leafy guns go off.

2. Three My son is three today, in a walnut shade ten children blow harmonicas, balloons roll like airy fruit from a tree of air September’s pastel petals falling down drift on the lawn and gleaming jetplanes scream. Time that turned him three has turned the leaves, has turned me thirty-four who yesterday Toddled with toys among such boys as these and girls in bows, the mothers of such boys playing London Bridge while butterflies escape their hands to taste brief dahlia joys. The caterpillar eating on the rose will strangely change but not as strange as he, seeing his son or daughter turning three while what inventions split his skies with noise. Delightful child, stay forever three, forever bend to blow these leaning flames, beguile with smiles, and when you skin your knees, cry the soon dry tears of honesty in a safe world of answerable whys.

Poems originally published in Beasts in Clothes by Harold Witt (Macmillan). Used by permission, Jessamyn Witt Picton, Executor of Harold Witt estate.

A hush of thrushes cautious in acacias eyes him sidewise, turns on instinct strings, twitching censure, arrives at some decision— outmoded parents imprisoned in their wings. But, small individual, he will seize the sun from puddles and ring the calla bells although their only music is a thud of moisture, taste oozing snail and raw butterfly until in liberal morning, a stern conservative, the tamest cats are tigers to his touch

to Rod Gilfry

Girl Harold Witt

Morten Lauridsen Fast and Delightful {q = ca. 160}

V 88

∑

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to Michael Sells

Three Harold Witt

Morten Lauridsen

Moderato, Tempo rubato (q = ca.60)

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to Delton Shilling

Boy

Harold Witt

Morten Lauridsen Vivace (h = ca. 96)

4 V4

∑

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n >œœ > # œ œ 4 & 4 Œ # # # œœœ Œ n œ ƒ >œ ? 4 œ Œ #œ Œ 4 # >œ Vivace (h = ca. 96)

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my wind - willed

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the

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boughs

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cresc.

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eme - rald

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plode

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