Songs of Remembrance (2013)

Songs of Remembrance explores the realm of memory, regret, and loss. The set opens with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s solemn “Autumn Within,” a recollection of spring from the vantage point of autumn: “Youth and spring are all about; / It is I that have grown old.” Longfellow’s “Something Left Undone” recounts howthe accumulation of small failures eventually burdens us with unbearable regret, “Heavy as the weight of dreams.” In “Remnant People in a Remnant Land,” Georgia poet Janisse Ray’s remarkable fantasy, “Remnant People in a Remnant Land,”springs from the notion that“A barn longs for the trees it was, history of forest, years circling in wood.” Alfred Lord Tennyson dedicated a great cycle of poems to the memory of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. From these I have set “Dark house, by which once more I stand,” and “A happy lover who has come,”both filled with the sadness of recollection after a great loss.

1. “Autumn Within” (Longfellow)—This melancholy song is a setting of one of Longfellow’s most reflective texts, shadowed by the memories of former times.
2. “Something Left Undone” (Longfellow)—This subtly disturbing lyric traces the seemingly trivial omissions of everyday life through to the tragic consequence of a life unfulfilled.
3. “Remnant People in a Remnant Land” (Janisse Ray)—Georgia poet Janisse Ray’s fantasy about how the boards in a barn remember the trees that they once were.
4. “Dark House” (Tennyson)—Tennyson’s desolate reflections of the emptiness of loss.
5. “The Flower” (Tennyson)—This deeply nostalgic song sets one of Tennyson’s most deeply felt and emotive lyric poems.