Scott Ordway

PREMIERE

Written for Jill Windes

Premiere: November 2008 at Beall Concert Hall (Eugene, (OR)
Jill Windes, mezzo-soprano; Scott Ordway, piano

MEDIA

NOTE

This music falls between the cracks. It lies somewhere between elegy and celebration, theater and song, exposure and comfort, terror of the unknown and acceptance of the way of things. It is a demanding piece, not only requiring the performer to assume two independent roles, but to explore the relationship between the two of them, highlight the ways that they inform and interact with each other, and ultimately reconcile the two disparate experiences. The complete terror of the opening measures is transformed throughout the piece, having been replaced by acceptance, resolve, and a certain degree of comfort. The stillness, the calm of the dead girl is reflected in the narrator's transformation, the gradual erosion of her own fear and neurosis.

TEXT

Fragments from "Tollund" by Seamus Heaney (1994)
Spoken text by the composer (2007)

It was the first time that I had left the house in years. There was a girl in the road, just by the way, and I saw her there. It was a pity, as there was a great deal of snow on top of her. She and I, we both had our problems that morning.

That Sunday morning we had traveled far.
We stood a long time out in Tollund Moss:
The low ground, the swart water, the thick grass Hallucinatory and familiar.

The scene was thoroughly shocking. I was thoroughly shocked. But I am no stranger to peculiar scenes. So I took to the other side of the street. From there, I could see my now-empty house. How calm it looked, like the girl in the snow. How calm, the house looked, like the dead girl, the girl in the snow. All three of us waited.

A path through Jutland field. Light traffic sound.
Willow bushes; rushes; bog-fir grags
In a swept and gated farmyard; dormant quags.
And silage under wraps in its silent mound.

There was no one else on the street, and the snow, both falling and fallen, made no more sound than the girl, fallen. The snow thought about turning to a cold rain. I though about running, screaming and afraid, into the coming night. Neither of us followed through, though, and I stood, silent, under the silently falling snow. Finding myself in charge of the situation, I made the first move.

It could have been a still out of the bright
'Townland of Peace', that poem of dream farms
Outside all contention. The scarecrow's arms
Stood open opposite the satellite.

As a stranger to most people, I seldom hesitate to take certain liberties with most people, and, barring her present situation, the girl in the snow struck me as quite like most people. As such, I extended to her a certain courtesy, a safeguard against the obscurity of the deepening snow. A tall branch protruding from the powder would give this place, of all places, a particular character. And so it did.

Dish in the paddock, where a standing stone
Had been resituated and landscaped,
With tourist signs in futhark runic script
In Danish and English. Things had moved on.

Even now, the snow was most ordinary. And so, I suppose, was the girl. Their present relationship, however, was most bizarre. The girl may have liked the snow. And the snow, well, snow can be hard to read. My makeshift marker considered joining the marked, face up in the snow. But it, being somewhat sturdier, held fast.

It could have been Mulhollandstown or Scribe.
The by-roads had their names on them in black
And white; it was user-friendly outback
Where we stood footloose, at home beyond the tribe,

My eyes hurt from the cold, and from the sun. My stomach hurt for a number of reasons. At this time, of all times, though, I felt relieved. So too, I thought, did she.

It was the first time I'd left the house in years. But, the silence having grown louder, I quit the street for the warmth inside my home. Somehow, I had seen what I needed to see. So too, perhaps, had she.

More scouts than strangers, ghosts who'd walked abroad
Unfazed by light, to make a new beginning
And make a go of it, alive and sinning,
Ourselves again, free-willed again, not bad.