Speaking Silence

Version for baritone and piano

Forces or Category: Baritone & piano

Speaking Silence

Version for baritone and piano

Description

for baritone and piano
A beautifully constructed song-cycle set to poems from Christina Rosetti to WB Yeats and the sixteenth century French poet Pontus de Tyard. Exploring the themes of yearning and longing at the end of a love affair, the subject of the texts focus largely on a desire for rest and even oblivion. The music responds accordingly, ranging from the bright and chromatic to simple, poignant settings of folk-inspired tunes.

Programme Notes:

These songs were especially written for David Wilson-Johnson, whose voice and artistry I very much admire. Since he sang in the first performance of my oratorio Or Shall We Die?, we have been planning this cycle of songs. The texture and range of the voice suggested to me poetry of yearning and longing and this also allowed me to continue the ideas I had begun in my recent song cycle for Heather Harper with Songs of Awakening Love. However, where Heathers songs were for orchestra and soprano, and dealt with first love, these songs for mezzo-soprano and piano comes at the end of the love cycle. You might say that where Heathers songs belonged to the day, this new cycle has very much the atmosphere of night and indeed, the desire for rest and even oblivion is frequently mentioned.
© Michael Berkeley
1. Blow, northern wynd
Send thou me my sweeting
Blow, northern wynd
Blow, blow, blow
Anon

2. Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet,too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Christina Rossetti

3. And is it night? Are they thine eyes that shine:
Are we alone and here and here alone?
May I come near, may I but touch thy shrine?
Is Jealousy asleep, and is he gone?
O Gods, no more, silence my lips with thine,
Lips, kisses, joys, hap, blessings most divine.

O come, my dear, our griefs are turn'd to night,
And night to joys, night blinds pale Envy's eyes,
Silence and sleep prepare us our delight,
O cease we then our woes, our griefs, our cries,
O vanish works, words do but passions move,
O dearest life, joys sweet, O sweetest love.
Anon

4. O hurry where by waters among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images-
Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?-
O that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry-
O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
No one has every loved but you and I.
W B Yeats
Used by kind permission of A P Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B Yeats

5. Pere du doux repos, Sommeil pere du songe,
Maintenant que la nuit, d'une grande ombre obscure,
Faict à cet air serain humide couverture,
Viens, Sommeil desiré, et dans mes yeux te plonge.

Ton absence, Sommeil, languissamment alonge,
Et me fait plus sentir la peine que j'endure.
Viens, Sommeil, l'assoupir et la rendre moins dure.
Viens abuser mon mal de quelque doux mensonge.

Ja le maet Silence un esquadron conduit
De fantosmes ballans dessous l'aveugle nuiet,
Tu me dedaignes seul qui te suis tant devot!

Viens, Sommeil desiré, m'environner la teste,
Car d'un voeu non menteur un bouquet je t'appreste
De ta chere morelle, et de ton cher pavot.
Pontus de Tyard (1521 - 1603)
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Speaking Silence

Version for baritone and piano

Michael Berkeley

Speaking Silence

Version for baritone and piano

Michael Berkeley

Composer Information

Michael Berkeley (b.1948)

Berkeley studied at the Royal Academy of Music and with Richard Rodney Bennett. Since winning the Guinness Prize for Composition in 1977, his music has been played all over the globe and by some of the world's finest musicians. His output ranges from solo instrumental to a series of concerti and the operas, Baa Baa Black Sheep and Jane Eyre. He has been Associate Composer to both the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales and is currently featured composer to the New York Philomusica. He has been commissioned for leading festivals in Europe and Australia and by the BBC Proms. Much of his music, including the operas and virtually all the orchestral music has been recorded, principally on Chandos. Recent projects include Collision, an electro-acoustic collaboration with artist, Kevin Laycock for the Fuse Festival in Leeds, and Gabriel's Lament, a large-scale work for the BBC NOW and their chorus.

Michael Berkeley's website