|
Love Songs (1999) for countertenor or mezzo-soprano and piano,
14' |
|
|
|
|
|
These poems by e.e. cummings, from the set “Amores,” combine images of
love and death, an unlikely but instructive juxtaposition. On the surface,
they can be read as the narrative of a lover whose loved one has died and who
is remembering both the physical and spiritual aspects of his love. But
symbolically they can be seen as a person’s understanding of death through or
because of the act of loving, as testament to the fact that we never feel our
own mortality more than when we are in love. Along with this love/death
juxtaposition is another juxtaposition: that of the cosmos (stars, moon,
darkness, heavens, god, soul) and the earth (flowers, waters, petals, sea,
city). Throughout the set, these images create an extended metaphor for the
mystery of finding the sacred amidst the profane. |
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|