Some Things I Love (on 7 poems by Jimmy Carter)
James Aikman
About this work:
JAMES AIKMAN: Some Things I Love
A Song Cycle for Lyric Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone/Bass, Chorus and String Orchestra
On Poems by The 39th President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient,
JIMMY CARTER: Always A Reckoning and Other Poems.
Times Books, New York ISBN 0-8129-2434-7
Copyright 1995 Random House.
Used by permission of Mr. Carter, Random House, and Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
First Performance by The Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Chorus,
Lawrence Golan, Music Director and Conductor. Catherine Sailer, Choral Director
Newman Center for the Performing Arts, University of Denver
Denver, Colorado May 28th, 2009
Some Things I Love is music inspired by seven poems by Jimmy Carter. The performing forces are neo-Handelian, chosen precisely for the unity and variety that voices and strings offer. President Carter’s poems provide further unique views this remarkable man and his rich life experience have offered us. From a purely lovely tribute to his wife, Rosalynn, to the knowledge acquired long ago that everything in life must be in balance – in art, in politics, in friendship, in considering what has been created and why - President Carter’s work glows with intense and passionate caring. His poems speak to me, as has his lifetime of service to his fellow human beings throughout the world. This inspires, brings extraordinary hope, and sets the bar higher for all of us who contemplate the stewardship and responsibilities the gift of life presents. The fact that he is the first president to publish a book of poetry shows firmly the importance he places on the arts and its place in our American cultural heritage.
– James Aikman
I. Considering the Void (Mezzo-soprano, chorus, and string orchestra)
When I behold the charm
of evening skies, their lulling endurance;
the patterns of stars with names
of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin;
other planets that the Voyager showed
were like and so unlike our own,
with all their diverse moons,
bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces;
comets with their streaming tails
bent by pressure from our sun;
the skyscape of the Milky Way
holding in its shimmering disc
an infinity of suns
(or say a thousand billion);
knowing there are holes of darkness
gulping mass and even light,
knowing that this galaxy of ours
is one of multitudes
in what we call the heavens,
it troubles me. It troubles me.
II. A Contemplation on What Has Been Created, and Why (Baritone and strings)
I tried to fathom nature's laws
from twirling models and schoolroom sketches
of molecules and parts of atoms,
and nearly believed - but then came quarks,
bosons, leptons, anti-particles,
opposite turning mirror images,
some that perforate the earth,
never swerving from their certain paths.
I've listened to conflicting views
about the grand and lesser worlds:
a big bang where it all began;
of curved, ever-expanding space;
perhaps tremendous whirling yo-yos
that will someday reach the end
of cosmic gravity and then
fly back to where they can restart
or cataclysmically blow apart -
and then, and then the next event.
And will it be an accident?
III. A President Expresses Concern on a Visit to Westminster Abbey
(Men’s and Women’s chorus and strings)
Poet's Corner had no epitaph
to mark the Welshman's
sullen art or craft
because, they said,
his morals were below
the standards there.
I mentioned the ways of Poe
and Byron,
and the censored Joyce's works;
at least the newsmen listened,
noted my remarks,
and his wife, Caitlin, wrote.
We launched a clumsy, weak campaign,
the bishops met
and listened to the lilting lines again.
Later, some Welshmen brought to me
a copy of the stone
that honors now the beauty he set free
from a godhead of his own.
(Dylan Thomas, Poet)
IV. Rosalynn (Chorus and Strings)
She'd smile, and birds would feel that they no longer
had to sing, or it may be I failed
to hear their song.
Within a crowd, I'd hope her glance might be
for me, but I knew that she was shy, and wished
to be alone.
I'd pay to sit behind her, blind to what
was on the screen, and watch the image flicker
upon her hair.
I'd glow when her diminished voice would clear
the muddled thoughts, like lightening flashing in
a gloomy sky.
The nothing in my soul with her aloof
was changed to foolish fullness when she came
to be with me.
With shyness gone and hair caressed with gray,
her smile still makes the birds forget to sing
and me to hear their song.
V. Difficult Times (soprano, baritone, and strings)
I try to understand.
I've seen you draw away
and show the pain.
It's hard to know what I can say
to turn things right again,
to have the coolness melt,
to share once more
the warmth we've felt.
VI. Some Things I Love (pop singer and strings)
Your enchantment in a lonely wood,
The fight and color of a rainbow trout,
My in-basket empty and a good new book,
Binoculars fixed on a strange new bird,
Sadie's point, and a covey of quail,
The end of six-mile run in the rain,
Blue slope, soft snow, fast run, no fall,
A dovetail joint without a gap,
Grandchildren coming in our front door,
The same ones leaving in a day or two,
And life, till what rhymes best with breath
takes me from all things I share with you.
VII. Sport (Baritone, chorus and strings)
Yesterday I killed him. I had known
for months I could not let him live. I might
have paid someone to end it, but I knew
that after fifteen years of sharing life
the bullet ending his must be my own.
Alone, I dug the grave, grieving, knowing
that until the end he trusted me.
I placed him as he'd been some years ago
when, lost, he stayed in place until I came
and found him shaking, belly on the ground,
his legs too sapped of strength to hold him up,
but nose and eyes still holding on the point.
I knelt beside him then to stroke his head -
as I had done so much the last few days.
He couldn't feel the tears and sweat that fell
with shovelfuls of earth. And then a cross -
a cross, I guess, so when I pass that way
I'll breathe his name,
and think of him alive,
and somehow not remember yesterday.
Version: A Song Cycle Chorus and Piano reduction of the string orchestra
Year composed: 2009
Duration: 00:25:00
Ensemble type: Chorus, with or without Solo Voices:Chorus with Keyboard
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation notes: Lyric Mezzo Soprano solos, and Baritone solos may be done by the full sections.