Room in Brooklyn/A Gradual Dazzle: Anne Carson and Caroline Shaw

10/01/21 • 29 min

Anne Carson's poem and Caroline Shaw's mesmerizing setting of it meditate on the feeling of being in and out of time.
The recording of the song, which appears on the album Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch, 2021), features Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion (Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting).

Previous Episode

Sag, wo ist dein schönes Liebchen (Tell Me, Where is Your Beautiful Sweetheart): Heinrich Heine and Rodrigo Ruiz

The 21st-century Mexican composer Rodrigo Ruiz sets a text by the 19th-century German writer Heinrich Heine. In so doing, Ruiz channels 19th-century musical style and offers a deeply moving interpretation of a poem about the loss of love and the death of an artistic tradition that Heine once held dear.
The performance of the song features soprano Grace Davidson and pianist Christopher Glynn.
The song appears on the CD An Everlasting Dawn. Check out Ruiz's recent CD of chamber works, Behold the Stars, on the Signum Classics label, and be on the lookout for Signum's release of his song cycle Venus & Adonis.
Sag, wo ist dein schönes Liebchen
by Heinrich Heine
Sag, wo ist dein schönes Liebchen,
Das du einst so schön besungen,
Als die zaubermächtgen Flammen
Wunderbar dein Herz durchdrungen?
Jene Flammen sind erloschen,
Und mein Herz ist kalt und trübe,
Und dies Büchlein ist die Urne
Mit der Asche meiner Liebe.
———
Tell me, where is your beautiful sweetheart
That you once sang of so beautifully
When the magical flames of love
Wonderfully pierced your heart?
Each flame is burnt out,
And my heart is cold and grey,
And this little book is the urn
With the ashes of my love.

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The River: Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider

Nathaniel Bellows’ poem and Sarah Kirkland Snider's haunting setting of it—from her song cycle Unremembered—revisit the site of a childhood trauma and meditate on innocence and the mechanisms of memory.

The performance of the song features vocalists Padma Newsome, DM Stith, and Shara Worden, and the Unremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sound, ICE, The Knights, and Sō Percussion), conducted by Edwin Outwater.
In the episode I discuss Nathaniel Bellows' illustration that accompanies his poem; you can find this illustration, as well as the others associated with the song cycle, on the Unremembered website.
The River
by Nathaniel Bellows
On the banks
The wash so brown
The shadows blue
They’re black

I saw the form
Astride the loam
Splayed out upon
Its back

A bear, a dog
A bed, a log
A child’s eyes
Are pure

Until the hands
Of the missing man
Were clear against
The dew

The river’s flow
A blackened bow
That tied around
Our town

Had sapped his life
Like a lantern’s light
Buried
Underground