“I HEAR SINGING” Rhythmic and afective characteristics in three choral settings of E. E. Cummings’ “i thank You God for most this amazing” compared with a recording of the poet reading his own work. PHILIP RICE TH623 (Analysis of American Vocal Music) Westminster Choir College, Spring 2012 “Pace, emphasis, and meaning are directly controlled by the positioning of words, and by both the inclusion and omission of punctuation marks.” (Springer, “he Poetics of E. E. Cummings”) ERHAPS MORE THAN any other “modernist”1 of the 20th century, E. E. Cummings was a master of blending expressive simplicity and technical complexity. While many of his contemporaries—literary, visual, and musical alike, were experimenting with avant garde approaches to expression which often rendered their works incomprehensible to the vernacular audience, Cummings’ poems have a strong immediacy and sincerity which has allowed some of them to survive distillation into the household lexicon. Some notably popular yet surprisingly syntactically complex examples are “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in,” “maggie and milly and molly and may,” “anyone lived in a pretty how town,” and the subject of this discussion, “i thank You God for most this amazing.” Hallmarks of E. E. Cummings’ work are unusual syntax, the visual layout of textual elements (Cummings was himself also a painter), typographical idiosyncrasies such as unusual or lacking capitalization, strange compound word formations, non-standard punctuation, and what John B. Lord calls “paragrammatical structures”2 (the use of words within typical sentence structure, but with strange or nonsensical lexical choices—e.g. “he sang his didn’t he danced his P 1 Cummings is not universally considered ‘modernist,’ for particular reasons, notwithstanding the fact that his poetry deals with themes that are more emotive than utilitarian (“if feeling is irst,” etc.), but moreover because his inherent philosophy is at times blatantly Romantic. Haskell S. Springer points this out in a 1967 article, saying “Cummings’ evident dissatisfaction with the limited ability of the language of literature to represent reality, and his extreme attempt to make it do so, mark him as a Romantic.” Haskell S. Springer, “he Poetics of E. E. Cummings,” South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Nov. 1967): 9. 2 John B. Lord, “Para-Grammatical Structure in a Poem of E. E. Cummings,” Paciic Coast Philology, Vol. 1 (Apr. 1966): 66-73. 2 did”).3 Peculiar declamation and unexpected formal structure makes Cummings’ poetry ideal for experimental composers (a particularly shocking aleatoric setting of “Now i lay(with everywhere around)” by Arne Mellnäs comes to mind),4 while its lyrical, romantic qualities makes it suitable for more ‘traditional’ settings. At its best it occupies a liminal space between Modern and Romantic, and attracts composers who also skirt this line: Ned Rorem, Elliot Carter, Vincent Persichetti, and others—in particular, the subjects of this discussion—choral composers Jacob Avshalomov, Gwyneth Walker, and most recently, Eric Whitacre. Cummings and Music While a case can be made for musical implications in all poetry, there is evidence that E. E. Cummings was particularly cognizant of the musical potential of his work. Although he was not himself a musician, he toyed with musical devices in his literary work during periods of experimentation early in his student career. In one manuscript from 1916, musical notation is found in the margins along with ad hoc symbols for word stress and other metrical elements.5 At the bottom of the page, he writes, “Note: in Music there are (12) units which difer in pitch, corresponding to the (19) vowel sounds; BUT the representation of the occurrence of any and all these units by a common symbol, whose form (or picture) changes only to portray prolongation, confers a suitability to horizontal progression, which does not exist in the case of a fait where the sounds (units) are presented by visible equivalents (generally speaking) calling for vertical progression.”6 We also know that Cummings was interested in tonal elements of language and speech, and that he researched Scriabin’s synesthesia and its association with chromaticism, trying to create an analogous system for phonology, “[drawing] up charts and designs based upon the color wheel and on variations in sound frequency.” 7 Additionally, his poems contain numerous references to music, in particular to singing—the aforementioned “anyone lived in a pretty how town,”8 “i carry your heart,” 9 and “maggie and milly” 10 all have 3 From “anyone lived in a pretty how town,” (1940). Mellnäs titled this piece “dream”. It consists of atonal pointillist passages, and a backdrop of dissonant prolation canons. Available through Walton Music (HL.8500328). 5 Richard S. Kennedy, “E. E. Cummings: he Emergent Styes, 1916,” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Apr. 1979): 185. 6 Ibid., 186. 7 Ibid., 191. 8 First stanza, “he sang his didn’t he danced his did”. 4 3 references to singing, and although “i thank You God” doesn’t mention singing directly, it does address the experiential phenomenon of sound in the third stanza, “how should […] hearing” and the fourth, “now the ears of my ears awake.” Cummings’ preoccupation with singing is efectively summed up in a quote from a 1941 interview: “Do you hear a sound? hat sound isn’t promising anything or proving anything or explaining or excusing anything or meaning anything or—pardon me for speaking frankly—selling or buying anything. Truth doesn’t sell or buy: truth sings. I hear singing.”11 It should come as no surprise, then, that Cummings’ work is exceedingly popular with modern composers. he poetry comes ready-made with musical energy and ‘sings’ right of the page. here exist no less than twenty settings of “i thank You God for most this amazing,” spanning over ifty years; there are almost certainly even more, but the purpose of this research was not to create an exhaustive bibliography.12 he Poem “i thank You God for most this amazing” is an archetypical example of the marriage of ordinary and peculiar in Cummings’ poetry. It is a quasi-sonnet (three stanzas of four lines each, one closing stanza of two), but doesn’t adhere to the strict metrical requirements of traditional sonnet form. Springer caricaturizes Cummings sentiment, “I’m sorry, but a sonnet will not be a sonnet, until you, dear reader, put enough of yourself into them to make them sonnets.”13 his is in reference to “it is at moments after i have dreamed,” which is in sonnet form metrically, but the meter is obscured to the casual reader by line-breaks. While “i thank You God” is not so cryptically encoded, Springer makes a relevant point, which is that Cummings sometimes makes it intentionally diicult to navigate his poems, and thus forces the reader to look more carefully at the poem, or at the very least read it more slowly. “i thank You God” is by no means the most 9 Second stanza, “and whatever a sun will always sing is you”. Second stanza, “maggie discovered a shell that sang”. 11 PM’s Weekly, (Feb. 16, 1941): 60, quoted in John Arthos, “he Poetry of E. E. Cummings,” American Literature, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Jan. 1943): 372. 12 he composer’s whose settings I did ind are listed below: Daniel Asia, Jacob Avshalomov, David Brunner, Paul Carr, Peter Dickinson, Jefrey homas King, Gwyneth Walker, Ellen Mandel, David McKay, Daniel Moe, Paul Moravec, Malcolm Cameron Peyton, Lloyd Alvin Pfautsch, Ned Rorem, Cecil Stefen, Clyde Tipton, Judith Weir, Eric Whitacre, and one composed myself (Philip Rice). 13 Springer, 8. 10 4 extreme example of this technique,14 but it nevertheless evokes a meticulous irstreading—not because of line breaks, but principally because of “syntactical distortion” or “dislocation”.15 65 i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is ininite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any—lifted from the no of all nothing—human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened) Figure 1. “i thank You God for most this amazing” from XAIPE (1950).16 A close look at the poem reveals several musically apposite points of departure in terms of rhythm. (1) Abnormal syntax, which Norman Friedman suggests (and I agree) is an intentional attempt at creating heightened awareness of the scene through the reader’s attempts to reassemble word order.17 How this translates sonically remains to be seen. (2) Punctuation, in this case the use of colons and parenthesis. Note the mashing together of the words against preceding punctuation (“wings:and,” “day:for,” or “sky;and”)—are these to be treated as compound words? If so, are they tied together in a rhythmic structure when set to music? Parenthetical stanzas would ostensibly be treated diferently within a largescale form, perhaps delineating large sections, or even tempos. (3) Line breaks, 14 “n” from 95 Poems is an excellent example of this technique. Norman Friedman, e. e. cummings: the art of his poetry (Baltimore: he Johns Hopkins Press, 1960): 110. 16 E. E. Cummings, Complete Poems, ed. George J. Firmage (New York: Liverlight, 1994): 663. 17 Friedman, 110. 15 5 which are related to syntax, and could have bearing on phrase groupings. We are rather fortunate to have recordings of E. E. Cummings reading some of his poetry aloud; this provides an unparalleled look into the sonic conception of the poetry in the mind of the author. here is one such recording of “i thank You God,” 18 which I have uploaded to the internet, and is publicly available. I encourage the reader to listen to it before continuing.19 Surprisingly, Cummings’ own reading of the poem seems to disregard most of the linear peculiarities of the printed text. He charges right through line breaks, but stops to pause mid-line, or even mid-sentence. His execution of punctuation is inconsistent: in the irst stanza, he uses the colon and semicolon as points to pause, but in the second stanza, he ignores them, saying “birthday;this” and “wings:and” like single words. In more general terms, the voices of the four stanzas are rather distinct—the irst is declamatory, with large pauses between each word, read in a proclamatory tone. he second stanza, rather than sounding like a parenthetical aside, has a breathless quality, hurried at irst, with a pronounced ritardando at the end, starting on “gay great happening.” he third stanza is again declamatory, but more casual between the em-dashes (“—lifted from the no of all nothing—”), ending with the most declamatory “doubt unimaginable You,” where each syllable is enunciated, marcato. he last two lines, unlike the second stanza, do have a parenthetical feel and are spoken lower in Cummings’ voice, with a slurred, sleepy quality. While any one reading of a poem (indeed, even if it is from the poet himself ) should not dictate musical treatment, it can be used as a point of analytical departure. he following analyses will use Cummings’ reading as a ‘control group’ of sorts, serving as a comparative model against which musical features can be analyzed in terms of how they realize the text. Musical Settings hree choral settings will be the topic of discussion, from three generations of composers. he irst and earliest one is by Jacob Avshalomov, a Chinese-born composer of Siberian and American descent, who spent his composing and conducting career teaching at Columbia University. His setting of “i thank You God” comes from a cycle of three pieces written in 1971, Praises from the Corners of the Earth, scored for choir and orchestra, and also available in a reduced 18 E. E. Cummings Reads His Poetry, Caedmon TC-1017 (33⅓ LP), 1953. he recording is on YouTube, accessible via the following http://youtu.be/axH9A28CTjw 19 link: 6 accompaniment for organ and percussion.20 Avshalomov’s treatment of the text honors Cummings’ metrical curiosities with mixed meter, alternating to it the text between 3/8, 3/4, 2/4, 5/8, 4/4, 3/2, and 6/8. he orchestral writing creates rhythmic intrigue with the violins playing on of-beats, an eighth-note behind the underlying rhythm, further obscuring the aural perception of meter. he efect might be consistent with Cummings’ desire to confound the sense of regularity in meter, but creates a frenzied texture that is nothing like the way he reads his poem. Still, the sentiment remains intact, and the whole movement has a declamatory feel, with marcato attacks and rests between words, just as Cummings reads it. Curiously, Avshalomov makes a few modiications to the text, changing “which is” in the irst stanza to “that’s” (which incidentally might change the meaning of the phrase, depending on whether or not Cummings intended “which is natural” etc. to be a restrictive clause). Avshalomov’s decision to truncate this word is perplexing because in both instances, it comes on the second beat of a 2/4 measure; the irst beat (a rest) could have been used to ill out the two syllables of “which is.” Despite this, the presence of the rest makes the interpretation forgivable since it creates space between “natural,” “ininite,” and “yes,” just the way Cummings reads the poem. Figure 2. Jacob Avshalomov, Praises from the Corners of the Earth, Mvt. IV, mm. 298-304 Avshalomov again gets it simultaneously right and wrong with the second stanza. He makes it more legato, forgoing the rests, and marks dolce and p, all consistent with Cummings’ reading, but again edits the text, changing “(i who have died am alive again today,” to simply “(i am alive again today,” with obviously monumental theological implications. He also removes the colons and semicolons from the printed lyrics—this might be in order to prevent singers from interpolating breaths, which would destroy the more faithful reading, which is to keep the sounds continuous. he third stanza will prove to be the most challenging musically in all three settings because it has the most baling word order when compared with the irst two stanzas. Avshaolmov takes a shot at demystifying the syntax by repeating 20 1971). Jacob Avshalomov, Praises from the Corners of the Earth (New York: Duchess Music, 7 the irst two lines, and omitting the em-dashed phrase altogether. he result is somewhat convincing; at the very least the repetition mimics what the reader would probably do (that is, read the confusing part a second time). Overall, Avshalomov’s setting is vibrant, clear, and colorful: probably pretty consistent with the way the poet intended the poem to be experienced. A few minor aberrations of the text mar some subtle meanings, but from an afective vantage, the setting is rhythmically successful. he second setting we will explore is Gwyneth Walker’s, scored for SSA choir and piano, also available for SSATB and piano, and both versions also available with orchestra accompaniment. Walker is an American composer, a generation removed from Avshalomov, with strong connections to the sacred choral tradition: the majority of her oeuvre is made up of sacred choral music.21 Walker’s setting is the one which most radically departs from the poem’s structure, both printed and spoken. She interpolates nonsense syllables (la, ah, etc.) to ill out rhythmic patterns which are not completed by Cummings’ syllables, and repeats some of the text ad nauseum to build larger phrases, but not long enough to construct ostinatos. In her own analysis of the piece, she explains that her goal was to create “vastness and grandeur,” 22 which she does quite expertly, though the efect is something like space opera—not nearly as delicate as Cummings’ reading (which evokes a kind of stately, sublime atmosphere in its own right). Stylistic value judgments notwithstanding, Walker does use some of the same techniques as Avshalomov at similar points in the text, and is more faithful to the poem word-for-word than he is. “natural,” “ininite,” and “yes,” are again ofset by rests, just like Cummings’ and Avshalomov’s interpretations, though Walker puts the rest before “which is” rather than directly before “yes,” the way Cummings and Avshalomov do. Figure 3. Gwyneth Walker, i thank You God, mm. 11-13. 21 See Walker’s complete catalogue, http://www.gwynethwalker.com/walkcat.html Gwyneth Walker, i thank You God: A Musical Analysis, http://www.gwynethwalker.com/ana/gw-ityg.pdf, 2. 22 8 he irst few pages of the score are in heavily mixed meter (as seen in Figure 3), and in this way has a surface resemblance to the Avshalomov setting— Walker, in fact, uses several of the same time signatures, 6/8, 5/8, 4/4, and 6/4 (3/2). After this exposition, the piece quickly settles into a more regular 4/4 where it remains for the rest of the piece, except for a very occasional 5/4 or 6/4. In her aforementioned self-analysis, Walker acknowledges that the stanzas are “uneven in length,” but she doesn’t describe how she addresses this musically. While none of the three settings contain real aleatory (though some other settings do),23 Walker’s is the only one that contains a truly arrhythmic section, the opening piano passage, which is entirely unmetered and looks something like a modern take on an unmeasured prelude. So, Walker’s setting follows a formal progression from complete arrhythmia (in the prelude) to mixed meter (in the irst stanza) to strict symmetrical meter (for the remainder of the piece, except for mm. 57 & 58, in 5/4 and 3/4, respectively). Either she was running out of ideas, or it says something about her interpretation of the poem—that the irst stanza is the most rhapsodic and disjointed growing out of a chaotic space, and gradually becomes more restrained. his is certainly a legitimate appraisal of the afective progression of the text, and in terms of Cummings tone of voice, is actually quite close to his reading. he last setting, Eric Whitacre’s, is by far the closest to Cummings’ reading of the poem, though I am fairly certain that Whitacre did not know about the recording of Cummings’ reading in 2000 when he composed Three Songs of Faith (of which i thank You God for most this amazing day is the third and inal movement).24 Whitacre’s setting is paced much more slowly, is less rhythmically charged, and is almost entirely homophonic: consistent with Cummings’ meticulous pacing and attention to declamation. he rhythms of the title phrase are the most striking in their resemblance to Cummings’ reading—the piece opens with three quarter notes on the same C-major chord for the words “i thank You”, followed by a dotted half-note for “God,” and another quarter on “for”— this is an almost verbatim transcription of Cummings’ declamation (he reads “i thank You” giving each syllable identical stress, pitch, and duration, then pauses after “God”). Also, Cummings’ puts an unusually pronounced emphasis and elongation of the vowel on the second syllable of “amazing,” likewise Whitacre 23 See Clyde Tipton’s highly aleatoric setting, i thank You God, for SSAA, flute, handbells, and organ, (Melville: Belwin-Mills, 1975) FEC 10125. 24 I uploaded the recording to YouTube in May, 2009. In December, 2009, Eric Whitacre posted a link to the recording on his blog with the tagline “Wow…a truly spine-tingling sound recording.” (http://ericwhitacre.com/blog/, December 9, 2009 entry). 9 elongates that syllable over an entire bar; furthermore it is the pinnacle of the initial phrase, with a crescendo up to ff, and an ascent in the soprano from E4 to G5. Whitacre notes the trio of three-syllable words, “everything,” “natural,” and “ininite,” (which Cummings also highlights in his reading with pauses), and sets them appropriately, each with a q. eh rhythm. While he doesn’t put rests between the words the way Walker and Avshalomov do, he does elongate the space between the words, tying the last syllable of “natural” over the barline, and holding “ininite” for three measures on an oscillating melisma. He indicates a breath after “ininite,” putting space before “which is yes” the same way Walker has done. Figure 4. Eric Whitacre, i thank You God for most this amazing day, mm. 20-24. His tempi are also reflective of Cummings’ reading; the second stanza, where Cummings’ reading shows a marked increase in pace, Whitacre marks con moto, and “this is the birthday of life,” where Cummings’ reading becomes breathless, is marked più mosso. However, “the gay great happening,” is marked slowly, mimicking the way Cummings abruptly slackens at that phrase. While he separates “tasting” and “touching” with rests (unlike Cummings), he connects “hearing” and “seeing” with mandatory ‘no breath’ dotted slurs, and inserts two full beats of rest with respect to the em-dash before “any.” he word “unimaginable” is particularly miraculous in Whitacre’s setting, because it almost perfectly reflects Cummings’ rhythm—probably a lucky accident because Whitacre sets it the way it is usually pronounced, but since Cummings exaggerates the pronunciation, the similarity is all the more striking. Nevertheless, it is worth noting since all three settings give special rhythmic treatment to the word, that is, each composer uses a tuplet to deal with its six syllables—more syllables than any other word in the poem. Avshalomov Walker Whitacre Figure 5. Comparison of the three settings of “unimaginable” 10 Lastly, and perhaps the most remarkably is the inal stanza, which Whitacre sets con moto, with a canon of ascending leap igures. It is a contrapuntal texture, the only moment in the entire composition that is not at least partly homophonic. his section is perhaps the most blatant departure from the tone of the poem, which is parenthetical, and which Cummings reads lower in his vocal register, with almost no tonal variation. In 2009,25 Whitacre released an erratum for the choral octavo to reflect his “original” setting of that last stanza. his “new” version keeps the voices lower in their register, and simpliies the counterpoint to a “simple chant-like round.”26 he composer explains in some detail: “For that irst performance in 1999 it was just a simple chant-like round, […] the night before I sent back the inal proofs for publication, […] I quickly rewrote the “now the ears of my ears” section. […] A year later I hear the new version actually performed. I was horriied. […] it completely masked the meaning of the words. he text just became lost in the ‘clever’ writing, and the most important sentence in the poem just vanished in a fog of academic writing and… pride. I conducted that version for years, trying every way I could think of to make it work. It never did, not even once. So when it was going to be recorded by the British ensemble Polyphony, I sent them the original version of i thank You God. It’s so much more simple, and humble, and to my ears, the meaning of the text now explodes of the page.”27 So, it is clear that Whitacre’s concern for a faithful and authentic rendition of the text is indeed deep-seated, and apparently produces some analogy with Cummings’ own interpretations. Maybe the text ‘speaks’ for itself, and Whitacre is simply an expert interpreter, or maybe Whitacre and Cummings actually have a lot in common—they both skirt the line between sacred and secular, both are preoccupied with the vibrant color-palette of sounds, and both pay careful attention to the intersection of form and meaning. Maybe most signiicantly, they both occupy that peculiar liminal position between progressive and conservative, between Modern and Romantic, both reaping enormous popularity as a result. 25 It is an interesting coincidence that Whitacre released the new (and more Cummingsesque) version of i thank You God for most this amazing day the same year that he posted the recording of Cummings’ reading on his blog. However, his claim is substantiated by the recording by Polyphony which was made in 2006, and contains the “original” edition (that is, with the erratum). 26 Eric Whitacre, http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/satb-choral/three-songs-of-faith 27 Ibid. 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY Arthos, John. “he Poetry of E. E. Cummings.” American Literature Vol. 14, No. 4 (January 1943): 372-390. Avshalomov, Jacob. Praises from the Corners of the Earth. New York: Duchess Music Corp., 1971. Cummings, E. E. E. E. Cummings Reads His Poetry. Caedmon, TC-1017 (33⅓ LP), 1953. Friedman, Norman. e. e. cummings: the art of his poetry. Baltimore: he Johns Hopkins Press, 1960. Kennedy, Richard S. “E. E. Cummings: he Emergent Styles, 1916.” Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 7, No. 2 (April, 1979): 175-204. Lord, John B. “Para-Grammatical Structure in a Poem of E. E. Cummings.” Paciic Coast Pilology Vol. 1 (April 1966): 66-73. Marks, Barry A. E. E. Cummings. New York: Twayne, 1964. Moore, Harry T. e. e. cummings: The Growth of a Writer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964. Norman, Charles. E. E. Cummings: The Magic Maker. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964. Sickels, Eleanor M. “he Unworld of E. E. Cummings.” American Literature Vol. 26, No. 2 (May 1954): 223-238. Springer, Haskell S. “he Poetics of E. E. Cummings.” South Atlantic Bulletin Vol. 32, No. 4 (November 1967): 8-10. Tipton, Clyde. i thank You God: Anthem for S.S.A.A., Flute, Handbells, and Organ. New York: Belwin-Mills, 1975 (FEC 10125). Walker, Gwyneth. i thank You God. Boston: E. C. Schirmer, 1998 (Catalog No. 5331). ———. i thank You God: A Musical Analysis. http://www.gwynethwalker.com/ana/gw-ityg.pdf. Whitacre, Eric. i thank You God for most this amazing day. Chapel Hill: Walton, 2000 (WJMS1021). Whitacre, Eric. Three Songs of Faith (online program notes). http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/satb-choral/three-songs-of-faith.