New Music USA Online Library

The Chimney Sweeper

Kris Peysen

William Blake wrote two collections of poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In each collection was a poem titled The Chimney Sweeper – two different poems with the same title. They were companion poems, both describing the life of a London chimney sweeper, but from different perspectives. I decided to make a multi-movement choir piece setting the text of those two poems, the first movement being based on the Songs of Innocence poem and the third movement being based on the Songs of Experience poem, with a middle instrumental movement acting as a transition between the two.

One thing that struck me about these poems is the interesting duality present in them. On the one hand, they are fairly simple poems, with very clear rhyme schemes. This gives them an almost childlike quality. But beneath that are darker undercurrents and more mature themes that are distinctly un-childlike. I thought this was very interesting, and I have tried to reflect that duality in the music, mainly through my treatment of tonality. It is certainly a tonal piece, but within that framework I have inserted various things that are meant to be unsettling – shifting pitch centers, ignored or evaded harmonic resolutions, and pandiatonicism, to name a few. This piece is about the juxtaposition of the macabre with the intensely beautiful, and everything in between. In that way I think it does good service to the text.

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