12 Poems of Emily Dickinson (1944–50)

Nature, the gentlest mother

There came a wind like a bugle

Why do they shut me out of heaven?

The world feels dusty

Heart, we will forget him

Dear March, come in!

Sleep is supposed to be

When they come back

I felt a funeral in my brain

I’ve heard an organ talk sometimes

Going to Heaven!

The Chariot

Over the last hundred years or so Emily Dickinson poems have been set by at least as many composers and it is more than likely that the tally will go on steadily mounting. With not far short of 2000 poems to choose from, many of them reverberant with the imagery of sound, a comprehensive collection would still be a wise investment for a composer interested in setting meaningful English words to music. High standards have been set, however, not least by Aaron Copland in the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson assembled over a period of six years between 1944 and 1950. "I fell in love with one song, The Chariot,” Copland has explained, “and continued to add songs one at a time until I had twelve. The poems themselves gave me my direction, one that I hoped would be appropriate to Miss Dickinson's lyrical expressive language.” Indeed, he went so far as to visit the Dickinson home in Amherst, where the poet had died a virtual recluse in 1886, to take in the atmosphere and see for himself the view from her upstairs windows.

Reserving the initial inspiration, an economic setting of The Chariot, for the end, Copland opens the cycle with the lyrical Nature, the gentlest mother, which takes its decorative piano figuration from the hint offered by Dickinson’s “too impetuous bird.” Although, after the climax of the day, silence descends with the night, the impetuous bird makes a final, attenuated appearance at the top of the keyboard in the very last bar. Even more explicit in its musical imagery, There came a wind like a bugle provokes an inexorably resonant setting of brassy and, later, bell-like dissonances.

In spite of her Puritan heritage, Dickinson was far from being an unquestioning believer: on the contrary, Why do they shut me out of heaven?, one of her more philosophical poems, is itself a question. It is all the more passionately put in Copand’s setting which, on the repetition of the phrase “Did I sing too loud?” at the end, thrusts the voice on a climactic fff to one of the two highest notes it will touch on in the whole cycle. The contrastingly compassionate The world feels dusty inspires a bleak lullaby illuminated by a discreet radiance following the cooling influence of the friend’s hand. The two aspects of the poet’s loss in Heart, we will forget him are represented in an expressively restrained and yet regretful exchange of counterpoint between voice and piano. Dear March, come in! is a timely celebration of renewal in an exuberant setting with another hint of birdsong in the second stanza and a witty ending entirely worthy of the poem itself.

Strategically placed as the first song in the second half of the cycle, Sleep is supposed to be anticipates the dotted rhythms and spare textures of The Chariot just as it anticipates its theme of eternity. An impressive proclamation, reaching the high point of the whole work on the fff “East of Eternity,” it is as severe in its harmonies as in its rhythms. When they come back, its mixture of spring-time lyricism and apprehension so effectively reflected in the changing tempos of Copland’s setting, meets its worst fears in the rumbling, tramping, tolling, ultimately forlorn nightmare vision of I felt a funeral in my brain. Consolation, though derived from familiarity rather than conviction, is found in the ecclesiastical sonorities of I’ve heard an organ talk sometimes.

Going to Heaven sounds like a stray from the Old American Songs – which is the irony of the setting since, while the poet is glad her parents believed it, she is just as glad that she herself does not. She comes to terms with death, however, in The Chariot where the dotted rhythms of Sleep is supposed to be reappear but now without protest.