Setting Sail
Vivian Ip, Conductor
Soprano
Loralee Culbert
Robin Freeman
Stéphanie Tokarz
Alto
Lydia Dahling
Elizabeth Ogonek
Jenny Perillo
Joyce Vickery
Tenor
Colin DeJong
Don Gilbert
Sam Green
Bass
Mark Chilla
Juan Hernandez
Gabe Lubell
Mark Oliveiro
Ryan Tibbetts
SETTING SAIL
by Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea, –
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
HOMAGE TO CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY
by Octavio Paz
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
(translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger)
Eternity inspires feelings of joy and endless possibility, but at the same time it can be overwhelming to contemplate and make our short lives seem futile. Setting Sail explores these feelings through the setting of two short poems by Emily Dickinson and Octavio Paz. My setting of the Dickinson poem was influenced by John Adams’ Harmonium, one of the first pieces of 20th century
music that I discovered. This movement is exultant, and expresses breathless excitement — the singers take audible breaths for effect throughout the movement. During the more solemn Paz poem, the singers speak the words “I am a man” in as many languages as they know.
Setting Sail was completed in the fall of 2006, and is the second piece I wrote at IU.