SATB, a cappella

When Dr. Kevin Coker approached me about collaborating on a choral song cycle, we talked through many different themes that we felt might tie a set of pieces together.  In a previous work, Color Madrigals, I had used the color wheel and texts by John Keats as a jumping-off point so, for this new cycle, we entertained various ways to do the same.  The idea we hit upon that we thought might yield something interesting was a song cycle based around something entirely quotidian (literally): the days of the week.  We sometimes see the week as a thing to make it through, but momentous events like the first atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and man’s first steps on the surface of the moon happened, boringly enough, on a Monday.  But more personal stories—falling in love, having a child, losing a parent—can also happen to us no matter what day of the week it is.  Thus, Songs for Seven Days was born.

To that end, I searched for texts that mentioned each day of the week and came up with some beautifully diverse offerings.  For the first movement, I read through E. E. Cummings’s collected works and found a goofy text about a chance encounter with a random stranger in Rome.

Songs for Seven Days was commissioned by the Blue Valley Northwest High School Chamber Singers (Dr. Kevin Coker, conductor) for their performance at the 2014 Kansas Music Educators Convention.

Note: I met a man under the moon on a Sunday is the first movement of Songs for Seven Days. It can be purchased and performed separately.

The Text

XLVI

            by E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)

 i met a man under the moon
on Sunday.
by way of saying
nothing he
smiled(but
just by the dirty collar of his

jacket were two glued uncarefully ears
in
that face a box of
skin lay eyes like
new tools)

whence i guessed that he also had climbed the pincian
to appreciate rome at nightfall;and because against this
wall his white sincere small,
hands with their guessing fingers

did-not-move exquisitely
like dead children
(if he had been playing a fiddle i had

been dancing:which is
why something about me reminded him of ourselves)

as Nobody came slowly over the town