Poetry for piano

Poetry for Piano consists of a prologue, five short piano pieces inspired by poems from Clark Ashton Smith’s The Star-Treader and Other Poems, and an epilogue. Smith’s words evoked vivid images that I sought to transform into music. The performer chooses the order of the five central pieces, creating 120 possible sequences; each poem must therefore stand alone while also contributing to a larger dramatic line. The changing order gives the performer unusual responsibility for the work’s linearity and for the way the pieces colour one another.

Clark Ashton Smith described his artistic ideal as follows:

“My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.”

Clark Ashton Smith - Star-Treader (selection)

FAIRY LANTERNS

‘Tis said these blossom-lanterns light The elves upon their midnight way; That fairy toil and elfin play Receive their beams of magic white. I marvel not if it be true; I know this flower has lighted me Nearer to Beauty’s mystery, And past the veils of secrets new.

THE CHERRY-SNOWS

The cherrysnows are falling now; Down from the blossom-clouded sky Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough, In widely settling whirls they fly. The orchard earth, unclothed and brown, Is wintry-hued with petals bright; E’en as the snow they glimmer down Brief as the snow’s their stainless white.

THE MAZE OF SLEEP

Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the colored clue of dreams, A gossamer thread, obscurely runs.

THE PRICE

Behind each thing a shadow lies; Beauty hath e’er its cost: Within the moonlight-flooded skies How many stars are lost!

THE MAD WIND

What hast thou seen, O wind, Of beauty or of terror Surpassing, denied to us. That with precipitate wings, Mad and ecstatical, Thou spurnest the hollows and trees That offer thee refuge of peace, And findest within the sky No safety nor respite From the memory of thy vision?