6 Songs to Poems by Emily Dickinson

Nature, the gentlest mother

There came a wind like a bugle

The world feels dusty

Dear March, come in!

Sleep is supposed to be

Going to Heaven!

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 mounting at an exponential rate. 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.

Not included in this selection, The Chariot is a rigorously economic setting based largely on one short rhythmic figure. In keeping with its more indulgent text, Nature, the gentlest mother is rather less severe, taking 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. While the contrastingly compassionate The world feels dusty offers no sound associations, it inspires a bleak lullaby illuminated by a discreet radiance following the cooling influence of the friend’s hand. 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 in the complete collection, as the first song in the second half, Sleep is supposed to be anticipates the dotted rhythms of The Chariot, which Copland chose to reserve until the end. An impressive proclamation it is as severe in its harmonies as in its rhythms. Going to Heaven, on the other hand, sounds like a stray from the Old American Songs Copland was working on at the same time. Although it assumes a more serious tone towards the end, the closing echo of the cheerful little phrase associated with the opening line seems entirely appropriate.