Different Seasons

“We have two lives and the second begins when we realize we have only one.” — Confucius

This song cycle was commissioned and premiered by soprano Emily Douglass. Her request to create a new cycle coincided with my realization of the finite nature of time, resulting in an urgent desire to live with purpose. For inspiration I sought texts that could encapsulate both the struggle and beauty of life in each of its seasons.

For spring, I set Lullaby, a poem written by a woman during her stay at a Seattle shelter, struggling to secure adequate housing for herself and her baby. I found the strength and hopefulness in her words compelling and challenging.

For summer, I used The Sun and the Sky, a text I discovered in an accidental time capsule-a stash of decades-old stolen purses concealed in the wall of a music room. One of the recovered purses contained a book of poetry, presumably written by a young woman in the 1970s. The Sun and the Sky gracefully portrays the tenuous self-confidence of a young adult involved in a love affair.

For autumn, The First Morn of Harvest artfully illustrates the dichotomy of the acceptance of the loss of youth within the colorful blessings of middle age. It was written for this cycle by a dear friend.

Finally, for winter, Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening was selected because of the conflict it portrays: the attraction to the “..lovely, dark and deep” woods and the pull of responsibility outside of the woods.

On a musical level, I strove to set all of the texts in the most accessible language I could conceive. Thematic material is shared between each of the songs, and the first and final movements end with the desire for sleep. In the first movement, sleep is in anticipation of the dreams at the onset of a life. In the final movement, sleep represents a departure from society, and perhaps the desire to live eternally with God, the presumed owner of the woods.