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Weir, Judith The Voice of Desire

Score for sale (North America): http://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.action?itemid=14016812 Score for sale (UK, Europe and other territories): http://www.musicroom.com/se/id_no/00057655/details.html?kbid=1296 Information about the work and materials for hire: http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/14270

Chester Music Limited Part of the Music Sales Group

THE VOICE OF DESIRE I. The Voice of Desire (Nightingales – Robert Bridges) Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air Bloom the year long! [Nay,] barren are those mountains and spent the streams: Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, For all our art. Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then, As night is withdrawn [From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,] Dream, while the innumerable choir of day Welcome the dawn.

II. White Eggs in the Bush (Blue Cuckoo – from Yoruba hunter’s poem, English version by Ulli Beier) The blue cuckoo lays white eggs in the bush. When war captures the town the blue cuckoo cries: “Kill twenty, kill twenty!” The red-bellied coucal cries: “Kill thirty, kill thirty!” Then death will not fail to come, then death will not fail to come. When men begin war, the blue cuckoo cries: “Fools, fools!” The red-bellied coucal cries: “The world is spoiled, the world is spoiled!” Then death cannot fail to come, then death cannot fail to come. “Blue Cuckoo” Yoruba hunter’s poem, English rendering by Ulli Beier from: Ulli Beier: YORUBA POETRY, Bayreuth African Studies 62, 2002 © Copyright by Ulli Beier. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission.

III. Written on Terrestrial Things (The Darkling Thrush – Thomas Hardy) I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land’s sharp features seemed to be The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy goodnight air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

IV. Sweet Little Red Feet (I Had a Dove and the Sweet Dove Died – John Keats) I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: Oh, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving; Sweet little red feet! why should you die Why should you leave me, sweet dove! why? You liv’d alone on the forest-tree, Why, pretty thing! could you not live with me? I kiss’d you oft and gave you white peas; Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?

The Voice of Desire was commissioned by the BBC for the 2003 Proms Chamber Music concerts. It was first performed by Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano) and Julius Drake (piano) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, on 11th August 2003.

Duration c. 11 minutes Score on sale: Order No. CH67419

COMPOSER’S NOTE All the songs in The Voice of Desire are conversations between humans and birds. In each case, the birds seem to have a more sophisticated viewpoint than their human hearers. In the opening song, The Voice of Desire (Robert Bridges), the narrator mistakes the beautiful song of nightingales for an expression of carefree pleasure in a lovely environment. Not at all, reply the nightingales, we live in a barren place, our song tells of thwarted desire and forbidden hopes which we can only express at night. White Eggs in the Bush is from “ Yoruba Poetry” translated by Ulli Beier. The cries of the blue cuckoo and the red-bellied coucal in the African bush are no mere birdsong; human listeners do not understand these warnings about the outbreak of war and the destruction that will follow. Written on Terrestrial Things (a setting of Thomas Hardy’s great poem The Darkling Thrush) is set in a dead landscape at the depth of winter. Suddenly a joyous thrush melody breaks out. Its ecstatic expression is completely at odds with human perceptions of such a dismal evening. Sweet Little Red Feet (John Keats) is not a dialogue; the bird in this partnership is dead (“I had a dove and the sweet dove died”). But the implied reply by the dead dove to the insistent poet might be that one can be smothered by too much passionate affection. J.W.

THE VOICE OF DESIRE Robert Bridges

Judith Weir (2003)

I. The Voice of Desire Voice

Piano

& 32

Animato energico (q = 112 )

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II. White Eggs in the Bush anon. Yoruba English version by Ulli Beier (q. = 66)

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& 42

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IV. Sweet Little Red Feet John Keats Semplice, leggiero (q = 80 )

& 42

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