Texts by Lucy Miller Murray. Used by permission of the author.
Available for high voice with B-flat clarinet, as below, or for medium voice with A clarinet. Contact the composer with queries.
REVIEWS:
…“Three Songs about Words”…by Jeremy Gill is a very layered, witful mimicry, translating the mention of “long crescendos” and “subtle harmonies” in “Please Take my Words” into their musical equivalents.
The clarinet is the real driver of the melody with its undulating motions disquietingly stirring the atmosphere of “On Hearing a Very Famous Man Speak Profoundly.”
Similarly, in “Words,” the musical effect rests on the contrast between the mezzo’s exhortation to “listen” and “be silent,” on the one hand, and Gill’s almost onomatopoeic use of instruments on the other.
– Bob Dieschburg, writing for Opera Wire, 20 September 2023
I was most impressed with Gill’s “Words” which had a wide, dramatic range for such a short poem.
– “Second New@Noon Concert an experimental hodgepodge,” Northwest Reverb, 15 July 2015
PROGRAM NOTE BY LUCY MILLER MURRAY:
Jeremy Gill offers a complex musical treatment of the three poems. In the first song, “Words,” the piano sounds the alarm with a percussive and dramatic introduction. The soprano then ominously demands, “Sit there, listen, listen to my voice.” The piano finishes with a conclusion reflecting the opening.
In the music of the second song, “On Hearing a Very Famous Man Speak Profoundly,” Gill manages to capture the ironic humor suggested by the title. The piano here is distant from any concept of mere accompaniment. The soprano’s demands are equally challenging. The text, written in 1959, was inspired by a philosophical lecture at Wesleyan University. While the speaker opined about the nature of reality, a “gray bird on a gray bush” could be seen through the window behind him “unconcerned but there.”
In the third song, “Please Take My Words,” Gill makes musical hay with certain phrases of the text referring to “long crescendos,” “subtle harmonies,” and “gentle ritards.” All three are most ingeniously incorporated into the music as are the bells of the final line. Lyricism prevails in this song within its thoroughly modern harmonies.
The songs were commissioned by Concert Artists Guild in honor of Market Square Concerts’ 30th Anniversary season in 2012 and were written for soprano Sarah Wolfson, winner of the 2007 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, who premiered them with pianist Renate Rohlfling on May 16, 2012 at a Market Square Concerts performance at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. With a clarinet part added for clarinetist David Shifrin, the first song was performed in 2015 at Chamber Music Northwest. [In 2015, clarinet parts were added to the remaining songs, which were premiered as a set by soprano Laura Whittenberger, clarinetist Melissa Lander, and pianist Wan-Chi Su at An Die Musik in Baltimore, MD. -JG]
The texts are as follows:
Words
Sit there, listen, listen to my voice
Sit there and be silent, love;
Ask me nothing, let me pound
My heart against your door;
Listen love, but do not open
Lest I should falter, fly in fear.
On Hearing a Very Famous Man Speak Profoundly
I sat complacent on that tin chair
And heard the ancient scholar say
That what is real we cannot know for certain
But only hope to feel at times its insufficient shade;
And all about me the learned heads would nod
In blind agreement of despair that knew itself
As innocent pattering upon paneled walls
That dulled its awful content and held mute the bleating heart.
Yet all this while I longed to press my lips upon your ear
And tell you of the drab, unconscious sparrow
That stared unblinking through the pane,
A gray bird on a gray bush, unconcerned, but there.
Please Take My Words
Please take my words
And turn them into song,
Do not leave them in a dusty drawer
For someone else to find
When we are done.
Please take my words
And turn them into song—
Give them your long crescendos,
Your subtle harmonies,
And your gentle ritards.
Please take my words
And turn them into song,
And if you do,
I shall be a child
Let loose among bells.