Serpents in Red Roses Hissing

SSAATTBB, 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.

Program note: 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.

Note: Serpents in Red Roses Hissing is the first movement of the Color Madrigals. It can be purchased and performed separately.

 The Texts

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

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.

Performed by The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists (Dr. Matthew Culloton, conductor)