Three Poems (2024)
mezzo-soprano, piano
mezzo-soprano, piano
Recorded April 11, 2024 - S. Bell, M. Wong.
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Program Note
This set of Three Poems unites the perspectives of three different nineteenth-century British poets (Bridges, Wordsworth, and Keats, respectively) on the topic of beauty. The first song describes the creative reaction to beauty—not only to “love all beauteous things,” but to respond to that love by making more beauteous things. The second song explores the reaction of wonder, marveling at “a rainbow in the sky” and then reflecting on the wonder of childhood which is often lost as people grow older. Finally, the third song transcendentally sums up the two prior songs in its conclusion: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all you know on earth, and all you need to know.”
While there are many musical connections between the songs, perhaps the most noticeable through-line is a motive which represents the “creative spark,” a shimmering arc in the piano that appears in each song.
Three Poems was composed for the superb mezzo-soprano Stephanie Bell, my classmate at Juilliard, and is dedicated to the great Source of my inspiration, the Holy Trinity.
—Jacob Beranek
This set of Three Poems unites the perspectives of three different nineteenth-century British poets (Bridges, Wordsworth, and Keats, respectively) on the topic of beauty. The first song describes the creative reaction to beauty—not only to “love all beauteous things,” but to respond to that love by making more beauteous things. The second song explores the reaction of wonder, marveling at “a rainbow in the sky” and then reflecting on the wonder of childhood which is often lost as people grow older. Finally, the third song transcendentally sums up the two prior songs in its conclusion: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all you know on earth, and all you need to know.”
While there are many musical connections between the songs, perhaps the most noticeable through-line is a motive which represents the “creative spark,” a shimmering arc in the piano that appears in each song.
Three Poems was composed for the superb mezzo-soprano Stephanie Bell, my classmate at Juilliard, and is dedicated to the great Source of my inspiration, the Holy Trinity.
—Jacob Beranek
