e. e. cummings

Hum...I am currently excusing myself from graduate work to seek a little catharsis through blogging for the moment. I have been endlessly lost in a sea of music history terms, research equations, fall concert programming, and near 100 degree weather. I need a lake or a boat or a beach...preferably outside of Georgia... 

OK, for today's beautiful finding.

Well, actually today is more like a rediscovery.

I was going through a ton of music online to find pieces to program for my fall concert. As I was searching, I stumbled across a piece that I forgot how much I loved! It is a choral setting to the e.e. cummings poem "i carry your heart with me." This is quite possibly my favorite cummings poem, but it is also just one of my favorite poems in general. I have always admired cummings for writing in such a free and unrestrainted style. I've always thought he conveys such strong emotion in a simplistic a thourough way. I know he was criticised often, and is still submitted to such criticisms from self-imposed poetry die-hards, but I love the pictures the poetry paints in my head.

So, here is one of my faves:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; 
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

ee cummings

Idiosyncratic syntax? Yes. Amazingness? Yes.

Annnnndddd....

Here is the choral setting to "i carry your heart with me" by David C. Dickau and performed by one of the 2010 Georgia All-State Choirs. I love this performance of this version because adolecents and teenagers are singing. They still have such a euphoric and passionate view of love that we can all learn from or revert back to sometimes. Honestly, I have seen this piece performed by several adult choirs with much more precision and vocal stabilit, but none of them completely convinced me. These students really feel it, and it is extraordinarily moving. :)! Click the link below to view the performance on YouTube.

" i carry your heart with me "


Here is the text:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Happy Thursday!