Photograph by Scott Ordway (San Juan Island, WA, 2021)

Recuerdo (2018)

Baritone, piano / 7 minutes

PREMIERE

Commissioned by WordSong

Premiere: 21 March, 2018; St. Botolph Club (Boston, MA)
Aaron Engebreth, baritone; Alison d’Amato, piano

MEDIA

NOTE

This short song is based on the poem “Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

TEXT

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

This short song is based on a passage from Wings of the Dove by Henry James. Its short text expresses a sense of longing for the faraway, the immeasurable, the unknown, and the unknowable.

The Ceiling, the Treetops, the Sky (2018)
Text by Scott Ordway after Henry James

The ceiling,
The treetops,
The sky.

To drop what was near,
And to take up what was far.

Adapted from Henry James, Wings of the Dove (1902)

"It was the accident, possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; of his straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the latter, neatly smooth; and apt into the bargain, at the time of quite other calls upon it, to throw itself suddenly back and supported behind by his uplifed arms and interlocked hands, place him for unconcionable periods of time in communion with the ceiling, the treetops, the sky. He was in short visibly absent-minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was near and to take up what was far."