A Million Acres of Sky

A Million Acres of Sky (2014)

Song cycle for soprano, cello, harp, piano, & percussion based on poems by Carl Sandburg
Dedicated to Chamber Cartel
Duration: 10'

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Program Note:

After completing my undergraduate degree in May of 2014, I frequently found myself occupying a quiet nook and reading the late poems of Carl Sandburg. These poems were, to me, like an epigraph for the upcoming month I had set aside for rest and reflection. As I read through HONEY AND SALT, Sandburg’s final collection of poems, I felt a kinship with the late American poet who, in the sweet air of the western North Carolina Mountains, reflected on his life with a poignant nostalgia I somehow related to as a burned-out twenty-two year old. I pre-composed the piece at one of my favorite places on Earth – my grandmother’s mountain home in Flat Rock, North Carolina, just a few miles away from the Carl Sandburg Home where Sandburg lived the last couple decades of his life. When speaking of their home (named "Connemara") in rural Flat Rock, Sandburg’s wife Paula once said, “We didn’t just buy two-hundred and forty-five acres when we bought Connemara – we bought a million acres of sky, too!” In each of these songs, I sought to create a unique musical landscape that would augment the restful beauty of Sandburg’s poetry and harken back to the land where it was written. The soprano melodies (most of which came to me as if prewritten and awaiting dictation) float atop lulls and bursts of instrumental texture and explore themes of innocence, loss, and beauty.

I. Foxgloves

II. If So Hap May Be

III. [Interlude]

IV. Lesson

 “Foxgloves” “If So Hap May Be” and “Lesson” from HONEY AND SALT by Carl Sandburg. Copyright © 1963 by Carl Sandburg and renewed 1991 by Margaret Sandburg, Helga Sandburg Crile and Janet Sandburg. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Foxgloves

Your heart was handed over

to the foxgloves one hot summer afternoon.

The snowsilk buds nodded and hung drowsy.

     So the stalks believed

     As they held those buds above.

     In deep wells of white

The dark fox fingers go in these gloves.

     In a slow fold of summer

Your heart was handed over in a curve

     from bud to bloom.

If So Hap May Be

Be somber with those in smoke garments.

Laugh with those eating bitter weeds.

Burn your love with bold flame blossoms,

            If so hap may be.

Leave him with a soft snowfall memory,

            If so hap may be.

                               ••

            Never came winter stars more clear

            yet the stars lost themselves

            midnight came snow-wrought snow-blown

                                               ••    

Lesson

In early April the trees

end their winter waiting

with a creep of green on branches.

                  ••

      In early October the trees

      listen for a wind crying,

      for leaves whirling.

                              ••

                  The face of the river by night

                  holds a scatter of stars

                  and the silence of summer blossoms

                  falling to the moving water

                              ••

                              Come clean with a child heart.

                              Laugh as peaches in the summer wind.

                              Let rain on a house roof be a song.

                              Let the writing on your face

                                   be a smell of apple orchards in late June.

                                                         ••