Because

I wrote Because in honor of my wife, Judith, on our first wedding anniversary. I presented it to her with the help of the Gregg Smith Singers at their summer workshop in Saranac Lake, New York, close after the actual event. This piece continues a tradition begun at our wedding, for which I wrote Grow Old Along With Me. Because sets the Sonnet XXXIX of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from her collection of forty-four Sonnets from the Portuguese. She wrote these in secret, presenting them to her husband Robert in 1847. Although she never meant them to be published, she was, fortunately, persuaded to put them in print. According to Louis Untermeyer (the editor of The Love Poems of Elizabeth and Robert Browning, currently published by Barnes and Noble):

The title was something of a mystery; it was a modest, and misleading, attempt to conceal the unimpeded confessions of an impassioned heart. The poems were obviously not translations; the title was merely one more token of domestic intimacy. At first Mrs. Browning suggested “Sonnets translated from the Bosnian.” But the title finally chosen was another homage to Browning; it was an acknowledgment of her husband’s playful way of calling her his “own little Portuguese” because of her olive skin.

Because is heavily influenced by the music of Lili Boulanger – in particular her Psalm settings – which captures with great sensitivity and dramatic awareness every nuance of the text.

Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace
To look through and behind this mask of me
(Against which years have beat thus blanchingly
With their rains), and behold my soul’s true face,
The dim and weary witness of life’s race,–
Because thou hast the faith and love to see,
Through that same soul’s distracting lethargy,
The patient angel waiting for a place
In the new Heavens,– because nor sin nor woe,
Nor God’s infliction, nor death’s neighbourhood,
Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,
Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,–
Nothing repels thee,… Dearest, teach me so
To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!