My Mistress’ Eyes (1971; rev. 1998; 2012–13):The Longish Journey of an Early Work

I have finally come to be able to quote artist/author Austin Kleon here, from his first book Steal Like An Artist (New York, Workman Publishing, 2012):

“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.

“…Copying is about reverse engineering. It’s like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.

“The human hand is incapable of making a perfect copy.” (Kleon, op. cit., pp. 33–34)

The second piece that I count in my composition catalog is a choral setting of Shakespeare’s well-known Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes, for SATB a cappella written in 1971 between my junior & senior years in high school.

I refer to it as my “Randall Thompson” period in my development as a composer—consisting solely of that piece—at that time, I must have counted Randall Thompson as my favorite modern composer for chorus. I also had a “Paul Hindemith” period (one piece), a “Leonard Bernstein” period (one cantata-length piece; withdrawn unless I can figure out a way to repurpose some or all of it), and a “Wilson Coker” period (an art song; also withdrawn conditionally per above). Almost all the rest of my auto-didactic learning to compose came from arranging rather than composing thereafter, so there were no more “composer periods.”

My Mistress’ Eyes is one of my more frequently performed pieces—it’s probably as accessible and relatively simple as anything I’ve ever written. One of the biggest problems I had with it, though, was, for a very long time, dissatisfaction with the ending. While the majority of the piece is in F major, the coda takes an unexpected turn to D major, ending the piece in a completely different place from where it started—just as the sonnet itself does. But the last measure or two never seemed quite right for a very long time.

Fast-forward to 1998. There was an e-mail list back then called CHORALIST, which was a wonderful cyber-place where choral music professionals and amateurs could connect with each other, and with composers as well—conductors would ask for repertoire suggestions based on, say, a certain theme for a program, and there would be many replies from other conductors recommending existing pieces, as well as composers who might have something relevant to offer.

One such call for recommendations was for settings of Shakespeare texts from Rita Varonen, conductor of a college choir in Jyvåskylå, Finland. At the time, I had available My Mistress’ Eyes and a much larger cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra on songs and scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (written in 1982, performed once, and which is in dire need of a second performance…). Small-scale was what was asked for, so I put the piece into Finale notation software with a little bit of editing, and sent off a .pdf.

A number of months went by, so I decided to follow up in the spring of 1999 to see if anything had happened with the piece. Rita wrote back: “Oh, didn’t we tell you? We performed it; it went wonderfully, & we would like to record it!” [I stopped to pick my jaw up from off the floor…]

I immediately wrote back saying yes, absolutely! She also asked if I would be OK with dedicating the piece to her college choir, Chamber Choir Cantinovum. I immediately agreed to that as well, and sent an updated score.

A larger number of months then went by, so I decided to follow up to see if anything had happened with the recording. Rita wrote back: “Oh, didn’t we tell you we recorded it? Didn’t we send you copies?” [Again, I stopped to pick my jaw up from off the floor…]

Copies of the CD, Commissioned by Cantinovum, arrived in October of 2000; revealing a lineup in which I was the sole American among otherwise Finnish composers on the album. And what a great album it was! Here is Cantinovum’s recording of My Mistress’ Eyes in its 1998 incarnation.

This led shortly thereafter to Rita and Cantinovum commissioning me to write Psalm 51 for their “Easter” (actually Good Friday) concert where it was premiered in March, 2002, and about which I have written previously.

Fast-forward again to the fall of 2012 and my choir at Community College of Philadelphia. By that semester, we had built up sufficient numbers and musical expertise that I thought they could handle My Mistress’ Eyes. I did some more extensive revisions of the piece, mostly via varying time signatures more than the original version to better reflect word stresses, and finally figuring out what to do in the ending of the piece.

In November, 2012, a video was recorded of the revised-but-yet-uncorrected version, which featured improvised interpretive dance by the young daughter of one of my sopranos. See it here, and enjoy!

In preparing those fall programs, I discovered that I had a line of the text down incorrectly for almost 40 years! The line in question reads: “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks;” whereas my version, since 1971, read: “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath from which my mistress reeks.” How’d I miss that all those years?

The only thing left to do was program it again the following semester (something I don’t normally like to do) and make certain it was recorded correctly. The corrected version was sung in concert in April, 2013—you may listen here.

An Antiphon from Hildegard:Antiphon for the Holy Spirit (1989)

I must begin by echoing my opening from January 1 of this year: I’m still here! I still have neither abandoned this project nor you! So much for that idea of posting every two weeks or so, though...

As it turned out: that online notation fundamentals course I mentioned I was designing back then did get finished and did, indeed, run as a 10-week course (compressed from its original 15-week design).

And that, dear readers, accounts for a large portion of the reason why I haven’t been here—the workload for a course such as this is nothing short of staggering! (I was, indeed, warned about that.)

This summer, two 7-week versions of it should be running, with the first having now gotten underway. So: I thought I’d better post something now, while opportunity presents itself.

It was in the mid-to-late 1980s when I first ran across Hildegard von Bingen and her 44 Symphoniae—her own musical settings of her own devotional lyrics in Latin. Both her words and music are extraordinary. Whenever I hear one of Hildegard’s works, it always gives me the impression of her striving to create a music that, in her day, did not yet exist. (That, eventually, would become polyphony, of course.) But compared with Gregorian Chant (as I do in my classes when covering Medieval music), the differences between Hildegard’s and the Gregorian versions of monody still amaze and delight.

Before I had encountered her music, though, I had picked up a volume of Hildegard’s Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum in translation and with commentary by Barbara Newman (the link is for the 2nd edition), and had become familiar with a number of Hildegard’s texts that way. In the spring of 1989, I wrote a choral piece for Pentecost for the choir of Central Baptist Church of Wayne, PA; and Hildegard’s De Spiritu Sancto was my choice for text.

Like May the Words of which I wrote previously, Antiphon for the Holy Spirit is also designed to be reminiscent of early music: it is written in a (partly) neo-Renaissance contrapuntal style, complete with word-painting in a few spots, but using an unmistakably 20th century harmonic vocabulary. The notes on Soundcloud.com include the Latin text and a translation. Enjoy!