FRANK STEMPER, COMPOSER
Remembering Fire (1990)
for soprano, violin, bass clarinet (clar.), piano and percussion
poetry by Rodney Jones [14 min.]
Commissioned by Earplay of San Francisco
Commissioned and premiered 15 April 1991 by EARPLAY in San Francisco.
Also performed at the University of California at Davis.
Opus 25 —A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 480228493
Commissioned and premiered 15 April 1991 by EARPLAY in San Francisco.
Also performed at the University of California at Davis.
Opus 25 —A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 480228493
NOTES
Remembering Fire is a setting for soprano and mixed quartet of the American poet Rodney Jones’ poem from his collection, THE UNBORN. The instrumentation includes singer, violin, bass clarinet/clarinet, piano and percussion. This piece is 15.5 minutes in a single movement. The music presents a rather strange nightclub scene, with cool-ish jazzy affectations “overblended” with other avant garde sounds. Rodney Jones’ amazing poetry depicts a house fire in Alabama from the point of view of a child, but with all the action happening in reverse. The presentation of this reverse chronology begins about half way through the music, after a moody introduction in which the singer participates with senseless phrases mixed with “quasi-scat” singing. As the singer tells the story (in reverse) the ensemble both cooperates by commenting on the events unfold (refold?) and takes off in various thematic directions. Musically, I tried very hard to parallel the “action in reverse” attitude.
Remembering Fire is a setting for soprano and mixed quartet of the American poet Rodney Jones’ poem from his collection, THE UNBORN. The instrumentation includes singer, violin, bass clarinet/clarinet, piano and percussion. This piece is 15.5 minutes in a single movement. The music presents a rather strange nightclub scene, with cool-ish jazzy affectations “overblended” with other avant garde sounds. Rodney Jones’ amazing poetry depicts a house fire in Alabama from the point of view of a child, but with all the action happening in reverse. The presentation of this reverse chronology begins about half way through the music, after a moody introduction in which the singer participates with senseless phrases mixed with “quasi-scat” singing. As the singer tells the story (in reverse) the ensemble both cooperates by commenting on the events unfold (refold?) and takes off in various thematic directions. Musically, I tried very hard to parallel the “action in reverse” attitude.
Remembering Fire
Rodney Jones
Almost as though the eggs run and leap back into their shells
And the shells seal behind them, and the willows call back their
driftwood,
And the oceans move predictably into deltas, into the hidden
oubliettes in the sides of mountains,
And all the emptied bodies are filled, and, flake by flake, the snow
rises out of the coal piles,
And the mothers cry out terribly as the children enter their bodies,
And the freeway to Birmingham is peeled off the scar tissue of fields,
The way it occurs to me, the last thing first, never as in life,
The unexpected rush, but this time I stand on the cold hill and watch
Fire ripen from the seedbed of ashes, from the maze of tortured glass,
Molten nails and hinges, the flames lift each plank into place
And the walls resume their high standing, the many walls, and
the rafters
Float upward, the ceiling and roof, smoke ribbons into the wet cushions,
And my father hurries back through the front door with the box
Of important papers, carrying as much as he can save,
All of his deeds and policies, the clock, the few pieces of silver;
He places me in the shape of my own body in the feather mattress
And I go down into the soft wings, the mute and impalpable country
Of sleep, holding all of this back, drifting toward the unborn.
Rodney Jones
Almost as though the eggs run and leap back into their shells
And the shells seal behind them, and the willows call back their
driftwood,
And the oceans move predictably into deltas, into the hidden
oubliettes in the sides of mountains,
And all the emptied bodies are filled, and, flake by flake, the snow
rises out of the coal piles,
And the mothers cry out terribly as the children enter their bodies,
And the freeway to Birmingham is peeled off the scar tissue of fields,
The way it occurs to me, the last thing first, never as in life,
The unexpected rush, but this time I stand on the cold hill and watch
Fire ripen from the seedbed of ashes, from the maze of tortured glass,
Molten nails and hinges, the flames lift each plank into place
And the walls resume their high standing, the many walls, and
the rafters
Float upward, the ceiling and roof, smoke ribbons into the wet cushions,
And my father hurries back through the front door with the box
Of important papers, carrying as much as he can save,
All of his deeds and policies, the clock, the few pieces of silver;
He places me in the shape of my own body in the feather mattress
And I go down into the soft wings, the mute and impalpable country
Of sleep, holding all of this back, drifting toward the unborn.