Chamber Music Piano,
Voice
SKU:
PR.111402850
Five
Songs for Mezzo-soprano
and Piano. Composed
by Ricky Ian Gordon.
Collection - Performance.
28 pages. Duration 25
minutes. Theodore Presser
Company #111-40285.
Published by Theodore
Presser Company
(PR.111402850).
ISBN
9781491132005. UPC:
680160680627. What the
Living Do by Maria
Howe.
The poetry of
Marie Howe has a special
place in Ricky Ian
Gordon’s heart and
mind, both haunting and
soothing. WITHOUT MUSIC
is a five-movement work
in which Howe’s
words and Gordon’s
music together give voice
to longterm grieving for
a loved one lost to AIDS.
The work was commissioned
by Music Academy of the
West for their 2019
Marilyn Horne Song
Competition
Winners’ Recital
Tour.
For a long time,
I have been in dialogue
with the poems of Marie
Howe. Some poets speak so
directly to you that they
become a second voice
inside you. I have so
many of her poems
memorized, and I speak
them so often because at
certain moments I know
she will say it better
than me.Many I have set
or tried to set and felt
dissatisfied and put them
away. Marie’s
poems are so plain
spoken, you want them to
feel, if you are taking
the trouble to set them
to music, that the songs
are plain spoken as
well... because it would
be criminal to set
Marie’s poems in a
way that obscures the
words and makes them feel
distant or remote.I first
heard Kelsey Lauritano in
a Master Class that
Stephanie Blythe was
giving at Juilliard. I
was bowled over by her
poise, the beauty of her
voice, her engagement
with her body and her
connection to text. She
is a real artist through
and through. I wanted to
create a cycle for her
where it felt like she
was talking to the
audience in the most
intimate way possible. I
wanted to be able to see
her heart.These five
poems are from
Marie’s book,
“What the Living
Do,†the book which
was published eight years
after her brother Johnny
died at 28 from AIDS. The
book is impossibly
beautiful, as clear as a
spring in a remote
forest... the poems
simply tell the story of
Johnny’s illness
and Marie’s
relationship with it, and
him... as Marie would put
it, they are “how
some of it
happened.â€I lost my
partner Jeffrey Grossi to
AIDS in 1996, so needless
to say, this book, and
Marie’s poems were
balm for me... one of the
myriad ways I got through
an excruciating time, as
Jeffrey’s death
followed practically, the
death of my entire
community. I feel bad,
and even awkward, that
this is still so much a
part of my story, but it
is. Is it PTSD, or just,
not wanting to forget? I
don’t know. But
these songs are steeped
in that time.