A Thousand Tongues (2019)
Duration: 15:00 minutes
Instrumentation: voice and piano
Premiere: October 14, 2020 at Darmstadt Staatstheater by Michael Pegher, tenor and David Todd, piano
Notes:
A Thousand Tongues is a setting of seven poems by the American writer Stephan Crane (1871-1900). Though Crane is better known for his short stories, his journalism, and his novels (especially The Red Badge of Courage), Crane’s stark free verse poems (which he called “lines”) offer a unique insight into his unconventional worldview. As I read these poems, several themes emerged: a skeptical and sometimes combative attitude to traditional religious ideas, the inability to express one’s true thoughts and feelings, and various images of birds. Indeed, while Crane often seems unable to fully express himself, or if what he says comes out crudely, I found I admired his essential truthfulness, his honest quest to understand the world and his place in it. To me, these poems together formed a compelling, if sometimes bizarre, imaginative space and I tried to capture that in the musical settings.
The title comes from another of Crane’s “lines” that speaks to both the search for truth and the inability to speak it:
Yes, I have a thousand tongues,
And nine and ninety-nine lie.
Though I strive to use the one,
It will make no melody at my will,
But is dead in my mouth.
