I wrote this set of two songs last year for my friend Hayley Mordecai’s senior recital. I had fallen in love with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins around that time and wanted to set two of my favorite poems of his.
The first song, ‘Heaven-Haven,’ is melancholy and wistful, built on the initial passionate motif and structured in strophic form.
The second song, ‘Peace,’ is a rollercoaster of contrasting sound-worlds; loud and brash; serene and weightless; that begins and ends in a shimmering, ecstatic anticipation of peace. The violin mimics the call of the ‘wooddove’ spoken of in the poem (Common wood pigeon).
Soprano, Violin, Piano; ~8:00
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Text
I. Heaven-Haven
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
II. Peace
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins