Imagination Sound - Music Creation and Production

These Emily Dickinson settings were my first real vocal compositions after having spent a good bit of my time writing for the theater and they set me on my path of concentrating on vocal and dramatic work.  As I chanced to open my book of the Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson one day, they seemed to me to be little dramas in themselves, and that has been my approach in setting them to music.

Lyrics

658

 

Whole Gulfs-of Red, and Fleets-of Red-

And Crews-of solid Blood-

Did place about the West-Tonight

As ‘twere specific Ground-

 

And They-appointed Creatures-

In Authorized Arrays-

Due-promptly-as a Drama-

That bows-and disappears-

 

Poems by Emily Dickinson used by arrangement with the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All Rights Reserved.