Two Emily Dickinson Settings

2002 flute, clarinet or alto saxophone, bass trombone, vibraphone and triangle; English texts spoken by the instrumentalists (CO)

Recording: Tales and Scales

A performance piece written for Tales and Scales.

Movements

I'll Tell You How the Sun Rose

4'

To Make a Prairie

3'

Two Emily Dickinson Settings was commissioned by Tales and Scales, a four person troupe – flute, clarinet, bass trombone, and percussion – that combines music, drama, and dance in programs aimed at young children. The Dickinson Settings are concert pieces providing musical contexts for readings of two poems by Emily Dickinson. The readings are integrated with the music and performed by the instrumentalists.

I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose
I’ll tell you how the sun rose,
One ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst.
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets.
The Bobolinks, begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the Sun”!

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while,
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray,
Put gently up the evening Bars,
And led the flock away.

To Make a Prairie
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.

Revery alone will do,
If bees are few.