How Can I Keep From Singing Gwyneth Walker Analysis

I am reminded of this quotation: "Information technology is not enough to exist right. You lot must prevail." Allow me rephrase that diction to fit here: "It is not enough to be creative. You must be heard." Gwyneth Walker certainly fits into that principle, as she has become a successful composer beginning through talent (of course) but then through sheer hard piece of work and business savvy. She has a very interesting website that includes some of the interviews and lectures she's given over the years, and I was especially struck by her essay "Aye, This Is a Business organisation!" The entire slice is well worth reading; here I'll quote just one definitive statement: "I experience that a composer cannot live in his/her own world entirely. Music is a communicative and social language. It requires composers, performers and audiences. And all three demand each other."

Many if not most mod composers (but like modernistic writers) are also teachers, using that ongoing stability to back up their musical creativity. But Walker took a different path, deciding at age 31 that she wanted to become solely a composer. She resigned her position at Oberlin Conservatory, a quite prestigious institution, and struck out on her ain to build a career. She ended upwards living on a dairy subcontract in Vermont, but she apparently doesn't run the farm itself. I'1000 a little unclear as to who does that, only a 1988 article says that "Composer Gwyneth Walker . . . lives on a dairy farm in Braintree, a village of Randolph, where she says she is continually motivated by the activity and free energy around her. She wakes each day to the sound of cows coming into the pastureland straight below her bedchamber window at 6 a.m." ("Vermont Family Subcontract Is Celebrated in Song") As of this writing in February 2022 she's all the same very actively involved in the music globe, with performances of her compositions scheduled all over the United states, some with her planned attendance. (I do want erstwhile to see a performance of "Friction match Point," her composition based on the game of lawn tennis. The conductor is to be dressed in shorts and tennis shoes instead of a tux, and the timpanist plays past bouncing colored tennis balls off his drum. Sounds like so much fun!)

My own choir, the Ruddy Creek Chorale in the Denver area, has programmed Walker's slice "Refuge," one of nine selections that she included in a song bicycle titled Sing Evermore! Hither'south what the composer says nearly the poems she chose for this piece of work, from the program notes provided on her website: "From early on to recent, the poems have the common thread of praising music for its power, its magic, its solace and its liberation." The text is by the American poet Sara Teasdale, who shows upwardly in most high-school literature anthologies—but don't concord that against her. Her poems are truly lovely. I have addicted memories of pedagogy about her, and my choir has sung a setting of her poem "Stars" in Dan Forrest'southward Three Nocturnes. I hadn't done whatsoever reading virtually Teasdale's life when I wrote nearly that piece, and I was therefore rather taken aback to find out that she died of an credible suicide in 1933 at the age of just 49. I too hadn't realized that she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1917 for her drove Dearest Songs, in which "Refuge" appears.

Teasdale talks about the ability of "singing" as a refuge for her soul, freeing her from the sad realities of depression ("my spirit's gray defeat), poor health ("my pulse's flagging beat"), unfulfilled desires ("my hopes that turned to sand"), and self-recrimination over her imperfection ("my own fault's slavery"). But she isn't really talking most "singing," to exist clear. She's talking about writing poesy. This stardom is made quite evident in her 2nd stanza: "A house of shining words." I measure of good poetry is in the layers of meaning it contains, and Teasdale has at least three: escape/freedom, refuge/shelter, and lasting bear on/immortality (even though this last is "fragile.") She gets these benefits from the act of creation, so the verse form contains a recursive loop: I'yard creating a poem telling most how creating a poem leads to all the benefits of creating a poem. And I must betoken out her striking imagery of fated hopes' being like "sand/Sifting through my close-clenched hand." I can feel the sand trailing out of my fist as I read that line.

Then I was putt-putting forth, learning about Teasdale'southward deplorable life and Walker's happy and productive one, when I realized, 'Hey, wait a minute. There'due south an extra verse in the vocal that isn't in the poem.' So I spent quite a bit of time trying to see if there were different versions that included those lines. Nope. Now I had an explanation for why the sheet music says "Additional words by Gwyneth Walker." I had at offset assumed that this citation referred to Walker'southward repeated apply of "If I can sing" with the additional "and when I sing/so I sing" to form a refrain, but she did more than than that. She added a whole extra poetry. (I do think she should requite herself credit for this in the plan notes she wrote.) So . . . I did what I always effort to practice if I'm writing about a living composer: I contacted her. Here's what she said:

Since the poem was written over a century agone, and it is now in the public domain, I am gratis to alter the lyrics as I wish. And I practise tend to brand changes with many of the texts that I choose. So, you are right that I added those words (although I doubt that many people ever notice!). My question of you lot, and so, is why practice you think that I made that addition? The answer may come more from the music itself than whatever poetic reason.

Well! Nada like being handed a challenge by the author herself. Here'south the additional verse:

For in my singing I can hear
the words of healing, soft and clear,
the melding of the parts to whole,
the very language of the soul.

To me, Walker is expanding on the same recursive loop idea that I mentioned above: "In the words that I've created I hear the instrument of my own healing, the integration of my own self, the expression of my own deepest spirit." Walker's words form the middle, contrasting department of the song (the "bridge") before she launches into the final climactic bulldoze that uses her expanded refrain. Also, every bit she pointed out to me in an e-mail, "In musical terms, the inserted passage provides the one place where the harmony modulates abroad from the abode key of E Major. Then, the return to E is made all the more glorious after the diversion." At that place are clear performance directions included in the piece as a whole, by the way–if the choir pays attention they'll know exactly what Walker wants: "triumphantly," or "shimmering arpeggios," or "with free energy and commemoration" or (my favorite) "with the mystery of singing," forth with the standard citations of tempi and dynamics. You go the idea that Walker really cares about how her music is perceived; that she has a certain flavor of emotion that she wants to get across and she's doing all she can to explain it.

Here's a terminal intriguing bit of information: Teasdale'due south poem has been set to music by several other composers—I've been able to observe 4, and I'yard sure there are more of them out at that place. But they don't use Walker's actress words, so they have to come up with artistic ways to stretch out Teasdale's brief text. Nothin' wrong with that! After all, Randall Thompson wrote a 6-minute piece using just the word "alleluia." It seems to me, though, that Walker did herself a great favor past inserting a new poetry that gives her a pin bespeak to write that contrasting section before returning to the main theme.

And with that I actually must close. Except, of form, for a couple of videos. Offset, a performance of Walker'southward piece–a good ane simply not the SATB version that my own choir is performing: