SATB, a cappella

Color Madrigals was originally conceived because of a commission during my 10-year residency with The Singers - Minnesota Choral Artists. Artistic Director Matthew Culloton had asked for something short on the theme of love and, having found something by English poet, John Keats, I felt that the work was a bit shorter than we had envisioned. That original text mentioned a color, so I thought I might write something else using a Keats text that mentioned a color and thus was born the first “volume” of my so-called color madrigals; the green and red movements. This was followed pretty immediately by a commission from the Summer Singers (Vicki Peters, conductor) for the purple and yellow movements and, later that year, Matt asked to finish out the set with the blue and orange madrigals.

  1. Serpents in Red Roses Hissing - This text starts off very simply as an exercise in dichotomy: every line contains two things which are diametrically opposed to one another. Keats takes this principle and seemingly works himself into a rhythmic frenzy until his poem sounds more like a witch’s incantation than a piece of poetry. But then, at line 23 (“O the sweetness of the pain!”), it suddenly turns into a beautiful elegy as he calls upon the Muses. After all this Keats ends up very simply in passion and sorrow over the grave of his beloved—a beautiful (and very human) ending to a poem that spends most of its energy invoking the gods.

  2. Blue! ‘Tis the Life of Heaven - Of all the Color Madrigals, this text is the only one written about the actual color it takes its title from.  Keats captures blue in all its forms by bringing the poem from the heavens to the ocean and finally back to the earth.  Because of this, the poetry becomes more and more intimate as it progresses.  I chose to write a gradually expanding hymn to create a sense of reverence for my own favorite color.

  3. Purple-Stainéd Mouth - When I read this text for the first time, I always got stuck on the last two lines.  I kept associating it with the image of someone whose heart is broken taking refuge in a bottle of wine.  The eight lines of the poem that lead up to this are what this person wishes for but, in the end, probably doesn’t get.  Anyone who has ever felt heartbroken knows this feeling and, although we usually heal ourselves of our own accord, “drowning your sorrows” can seem awfully inviting sometimes.

  4. Yellow Brooms and Cold Mushrooms - The life of a satyr must be an easy thing.  Essentially they just follow the wine-god around and spend most of their lives wrapped in joy and ecstasy in a drunken state of glee.  I used some extended vocal techniques (glissandi, vocal “hiccups” and a violent, “drunken” key change) to portray the unpredictable nature of a jovial forest creature that’s had way too much to drink.

  5. A Grass-Green Pillow - If there were a “standard” subject for poetry centered on the season of spring it would probably be the subject of love and, more specifically, new love.  Luckily, the genius of Keats takes on this traditional theme with the amazing, poetic language and seamless rhyme he is known for.  I gravitated towards this particular text because of the symmetry between the first and second halves of the poem.  In the first two stanzas it sounds like the stereotypical, overzealous young man trying to woo a maiden who might be above him in social standing and may or may not return his sentiments.  However, once you reach the midway point (and especially in the last stanza), it suddenly becomes much more tender and romantic—as if he suddenly figures out the difference between lust and love.

    I’d like to think he chooses the latter.

  6. Orange-Mounts of More Soft Ascent - It seems that Keats was not a fan of the color orange.  I can’t say that I am either but, after undertaking the task of reading Keats’ collected works to find poems that mentioned colors, I wish he would have enjoyed it a little more because it seems that in his short life he only used the word “orange” once in his poetry.  Granted that it’s one of those words that’s sort of famous for not rhyming with anything, but it still seemed ironic that in 458 pages the color only came up once.

    That being said, I was lucky he decided to use it in a great poem.  In the eight lines I excerpted Keats sprays invective on the prideful like a literary skunk (and even mentions another color in the process).  He builds toward a final, desperate accusation to the heavens spitting out consonants like a great snake along the way.

Performed by The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists (Dr. Matthew Culloton, conductor) and the Summer Singers (Vicki Peters, conductor).

 The Texts

By John Keats (England, 1795-1821)
Adapted by the composer

1. Serpents in Red Roses Hissing 
Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
   Lethe’s weed and Hermes’ feather;
Come today, and come tomorrow,
   I do love you both together!
   I love to mark sad faces in fair weather,
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder.
   Fair and foul I love together:
   Meadows sweet where flames burn under,
   And a giggle at a wonder;
   Visage sage at pantomime;
   Funeral, and steeple chime;
   Infant playing with a skull;
   Morning fair, and stormwrecked hull;
   Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
   Serpents in red roses hissing;
   Cleopatra regal-dressed
   With the aspics at her breast
   Dancing music, music sad,
   Both together, sane and mad;
   Muses bright and Muses pale;
   Sombre Saturn, Momus hale.
   Laugh and sigh, and laugh again—
   O the sweetness of the pain!
   Muses bright, and Muses pale,
   Bare your faces of the veil!
   Let me see! and let me write
   Of the day and of the night—
   Both together.  Let me slake
   All my thirst for sweet heartache!
   Let my bower be of yew,
   Interwreathed with myrtles new;
   Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
   And my couch a low grass tomb

2. Blue! ‘Tis the life of heaven
Blue!  ‘Tis the life of heaven, the domain
   Of Cynthia, the wide palace of the sun,
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,
   The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun,
Blue!  ‘Tis the life of waters—Ocean
   And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
   Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.
Blue!  Gentle cousin to the forest-green,
   Married to green in all the sweetest flowers—
Forget-me-not, the blue-bell, and, that queen
   Of secrecy, the violet.  What strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow!  But how great,
When in an eye thou art, alive with fate!

3. Purple-Stainéd Mouth
O, for a draught of vintage!  that hath been
   Cooled a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
   Dancing, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
   Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
      With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
         And purple-stainéd mouth,
   That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
      And with thee fade away into the forest dim—

4. Yellow Brooms and Cold Mushrooms 
‘Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs!  Whence came ye,
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
      Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?’—
‘For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
      And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth!
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
      To our mad minstrelsy!’

5. A Grass-Green Pillow 
Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
      And what have ye there i’ the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
      Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?
 
I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
      And I love your junkets mainly,
But ’hind the door I love kissing more,
      O look not so disdainly.
 
I love your hills, and I love your dales,
     And I love your flocks a-bleating—
But O, on the heather to lie together,
      With both our hearts a-beating!
 
I’ll put your basket all safe in a nook,
      And your shawl I hang up on this willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy’s eye
      And kiss on a grass-green pillow.

6. Orange-Mounts of More Soft Ascent
Why were they proud?  Because their marble founts
   Gushed with more pride than do a wretch’s tears?—
Why were they proud?  Because fair orange-mounts
   Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?—
Why were they proud?  Because red-lined accounts
   Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?—
Why were they proud?  again we ask aloud,
Why in the name of Glory were they proud?