Photograph by Scott Ordway (San Juan Island, WA, 2021)

La Mort des Amants (2018)

Mezzo-soprano, piano / 5 minutes

MEDIA

TEXT

by Charles Baudelaire

Nous aurons des lits pleins d'odeurs légères,
Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux,
Et d'étranges fleurs sur des étagères,
Écloses pour nous sous des cieux plus beaux.

Usant à l'envi1 leurs chaleurs dernières,
Nos deux cœurs seront deux vastes flambeaux,
Qui réfléchiront leurs doubles lumières
Dans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs jumeaux.

Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique,
Nous échangerons un éclair unique,
Comme un long sanglot, tout chargé d'adieux ;

Et plus tard un Ange, entrouvrant les portes,
Viendra ranimer, fidèle et joyeux,
Les miroirs ternis et les flammes mortes.

This short song is based on a passage from Wings of the Dove by Henry James. Its short text expresses a sense of longing for the faraway, the immeasurable, the unknown, and the unknowable.

The Ceiling, the Treetops, the Sky (2018)
Text by Scott Ordway after Henry James

The ceiling,
The treetops,
The sky.

To drop what was near,
And to take up what was far.

Adapted from Henry James, Wings of the Dove (1902)

"It was the accident, possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; of his straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the latter, neatly smooth; and apt into the bargain, at the time of quite other calls upon it, to throw itself suddenly back and supported behind by his uplifed arms and interlocked hands, place him for unconcionable periods of time in communion with the ceiling, the treetops, the sky. He was in short visibly absent-minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was near and to take up what was far."