Setting by Ned Rorem. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost

Transcription

1 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Setting by Ned Rorem

2 Setting by Charles Ives from 114 Songs Note: Gray letters indicate part of the section cut by composer. from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, [and*] nude? How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, Else it were time lost listening to me. I do not snivel that snivel the world over, That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth, That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears. Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids.... conformity goes to the fourth-removed, I cock my hat as I please indoors or out. Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious? I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair, And counselled with doctors and calculated close and found no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. And I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. And I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all. I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time. * added by composer

3 Who Knows if the Moon s by e.e. cummings who knows if the moon s a baloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky filled with pretty people? (and if you and i should Settings by Dominic Argento from the cycle Songs About Spring get into it,if they should take me and take you into their baloon, why then we d go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds: go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody s ever visited,where always it s Spring)and everyone s in love and flowers pick themselves

4 Setting by Lori Leitman from the cycle Plums This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

5 I Felt a Funeral in my Brain by Emily Dickinson I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through - And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here - And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then - There Came a Wind Like a Bugle by Emily Dickinson There came a Wind like a Bugle - It quivered through the Grass And a Green Chill upon the Heat So ominous did pass We barred the Windows and the Doors As from an Emerald Ghost - The Doom's electric Moccasin The very instant passed - On a strange Mob of panting Trees And Fences fled away And Rivers where the Houses ran Those looked that lived - that Day - The Bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings told - How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the World! Settings of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland and Ernst Bacon Note: Gray letters indicate sections cut by the composer.

6 How Happy is the Little Stone by Emily Dickinson How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity.