CBA Ode to Joy

Program Notes I Will Be Earth

Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947) http://www.gwynethwalker.com/jpg/gw-and.jpg I Will Be Earth is the fourth and final song of Gwyneth Walker’s song cycle “Mornings Innocent,” settings of four poems by American poet May Swenson.

I Will Be Earth I will be earth, you be the flower, You have found my root, you are the rain, I will be boat, and you the rower.

You rock me and toss me, you are the sea. How be steady earth that is now a flood. The root is the oar afloat where has blown our bud.

We will be desert, pure salt the seed. Burn radiant love, born scorpion need. The song was commissioned in 1992 by St. Joseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut, to celebrate the College’s 60th anniversary year.

American composer Gwyneth Walker intended the song to be a simple and straightforward representation of the sentiments of May Swenson’s love poem. The song begins with a sweet and wistful melody for the first lines, bare-faced and innocent; proceeds to a stormy section that encompasses such robust obscurities as, “We will be desert, pure salt the seed / Burn radiant love, born scorpion need;” and ends with an elaboration on the initial theme and words. The composer completed an orchestration of this song in 2005.

Walker first became aware of May Swenson’s work when she read Swenson’s obituary and then found a special connection to the poet. She has said she loves it “for its humor and caprice, its honesty and its unashamed embrace of eroticism.” The poems of May Swenson (1913 - 1989) at times explore the nature of love, especially lesbian love, and often combine the idea of nature as it reflects sexuality. Ms. Walker’s more than 350 commissioned works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, and solo voice, include more popular works such as Songs for Women’s Voices, a cycle of choral works based on six poems by poet Swenson, and A Vision of Hills, a piano trio that Walker says was inspired by Vermont, her home state for many years. “My pieces always have melody and form and a rhythm that’s right there for you,” she has said. She has been particularly interested in dramatic works that combine music with readings, acting, and movement. To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, Walker composed a new setting of the Longfellow poem Paul Revere’s Ride which premiered in January 2013. With a D.M.A. degree in Music Composition from the University of Hartford Hartt School of Music, Walker taught for many years at the Oberlin College Conservatory until 1982 when she decided to pursue music composition full time. During her high school and college careers Walker performed with vocal octets for which she created the arrangements. In 2012, she was elected a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2018 received the “Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award” from Choral Arts New England. She divides her time between her childhood hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut, and the musical community of Randolph, Vermont.

28 ODE TO JOY