Chansons Innocentes
Charles Griffin
About this work:
These short poems by e. e. cummings contain a wonderful, compact interplay between images that reflect a child's naiveté and playfulness and an adult's fear of aging and death. These poems find particular poignancy in the compression of these dual meanings into single images. "In Just- / spring" is the magical moment when the world reveals most strongly its process of renewal, bringing with it sunshine and mud. But here spring also reflects an adult's perspective (the balloon man's perspective - he is a figure similar to a pied piper beckoning the children to their inevitable future), one who sees In-Just-[ice] in the cycle of life; spring is a metaphor for time past. "hist whist" is replete with 'scary' images: little ghost things, twitchy witches, itchy mousies and worst of all, the old woman that knows the devil himself. "Tumbling-hair" is both the untamed, abundant locks of youth and the loss of hair. In this poem the daisies bully their way through the soil shared by other flowers, representing the relentless push of one generation after another. In the face of these dualities, the narrative voice of the poems belongs to children, and cummings infuses the poems with a childlike charm and vibrancy. The musical settings of these poems aim to infuse a similar charm, with subtle hints at the embedded double-meanings.
Year composed: 1993
Duration: 00:05:00
Ensemble type: Chorus, with or without Solo Voices:Chorus, Unaccompanied
Instrumentation: