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Walden Songs: from "The Ponds"

from A Still Subtler Spirit by Monroe Golden

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about

Walden Songs, completed in 1999, were written for Kathryn Venable. After spending some time in search of prose about the relationship of people to the natural world, a conversation with Thoreau scholar Theodore Haddin led me back to Walden. In short order, I found three excerpts that were not only amenable to setting, but also suggested musical treatment because of the nature of the text. For instance, in setting the excerpt from "The Ponds," I alternated two different musical textures and changed their relationship to each other over time, just as Thoreau compares the surface of water reflecting air to the surface of air and a higher plane, perhaps spiritual, but certainly beyond present human perception.

lyrics

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.

credits

from A Still Subtler Spirit, released September 15, 2003
Adam Bowles, piano
Kathryn Venable, mezzo-soprano

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Monroe Golden Alabama

Monroe Golden is a composer from rural Alabama whose works explore microtonal systems, described by critics as “delightfully disorienting,” “lovely, sumptuous, yet arcane,” and “irresistible music, full of wit and beauty.” There are two prior dedicated audio releases of his music: A Still Subtler Spirit (Living Artist Recordings, 2003), and Alabama Places (innova Recordings, 2007). ... more

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