Music and Texts of GARY BACHLUND
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Incantation - (2012)
Elinor Wylie
for mezzo soprano and piano
A white well
In a black cave;
A bright shell
In a dark wave.
A white rose
Black brambles hood;
Smooth bright snows
In a dark wood.
A flung white glove
In a dark fight;
A white dove
On a wild black night.
A white door
In a dark lane;
A bright core
To bitter black pain.
A white hand
Waved from dark walls;
In a burnt black land
Bright waterfalls.
A bright spark
Where black ashes are;
In the smothering dark
One white star.2 pages, circa 2' 30"
Elinor Wylie
The text is taken from Wylie's 1921 collection, Nets to Catch the Wind.
Each set of four lines is gathered by the poet into a stanza, while I chose to create verses of six lines of text as a shape variation on the whole. For this, six stanzas become four large arches with a last "button" as summary. Each large arch moves to a "distant" tonal domain, such that the structure moves as follows: D natural - D flat - C natural - D flat - D natural, and then cadences in a foreshortening of that last set of harmonic relationships. The augmented chords for the dominant slip the setting from region to region in a set of alterations like unto the text's white-black and bright-dark contrasts.
The score for Incantation is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.
