A cappella music (without instrumental accompaniment) is particularly enjoyable for me to listen to. As a poet (and an avocational musician), I am drawn to the similarities that poems and a cappella music have. Lyrical phrasing, meter, rhyming, and onomatopoeia mean so much to a cappella music, because it relies so heavily on the human vocal element.
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Anyone that has followed me since my origins here with Taps and Ratamacues may recall this as a semiweekly feature for a while, but I haven’t written about specific music/poetry combinations in quite some time. Again, as in other entries, this is not an a cappella piece specifically, but the positive interaction of music with poetry is undeniable.
This entry came about as a result of phone conversation with my mother and father, both life-long musicians – now retired. They both have an impeccable memory for musical anecdotes.
We were discussing the word taciturn, as it described a friend of theirs going through rough time, to which my father said the only other place he ever recalled hearing that word was in a choral setting of Robert Frost’s poem, Choose Something Like a Star.
My curiosity was peaked, and I went searching.
Frost wrote the poem in 1916. It is a remarkable piece that addresses humankind’s need for reassurance from a greater being. It contains elements of philosophy, religion, and science – the trifecta of sought meaning. It is one of Frost’s more direct and driven poems. We seek meaning in life, and can choose things to convey that meaning. We expect these icons to give us direction and explanation. “To be wholly taciturn is not allowed.”
Frost’s point was that in choosing “something like a star”, something distant and far off, we can be comforted in the fact that it exists and “it burns” despite our desire for clear explanation.
Randall Thompson (1899-1994) wrote a collection of songs using Frost poems as lyrics, entitled Frostiana (Seven Country Songs). In 1959 Thompson was commissioned to write a piece commemorating the bicentennial of the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. It was decided that the piece should include lyrics comprised of Robert Frost’s poetry, as he had lived in Amherst for a number of years. The town originally lobbied for The Gift Outright, which Frost later recited at JFK’s inauguration. Not believing that poem to be appropriate for this occasion, Thompson gained permission to select poems himself. He eventually chose seven texts – including the well-known poems The Road not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Also chosen was the poem Choose Something Like a Star.
The vocal arrangement starts ethereally, with sopranos singing the ‘O star’ phrasing as if it is a far away object and the other voices of the choir building in the harmony – pushing outward to meet this fairest object in sight. Thompson is masterful in his use of chord structure and phrasing with Frost’s poem. There is tension in the unanswered questions, there is calm in the resolution.
Frost and Thompson knew each other and held great mutual respect for each man’s work. Frost was in attendance at the premiere performance of Frostiana, and was so delighted by the performance that, at the conclusion of the piece, he stood up and shouted, “Sing that again!” In fact, he was so impressed by the composition that he banned any other composers from setting his poems to music.
We seek meaning in the universe, and often we can find it in the beauty and unexplainable mystery of existence itself.
Taps and Ratamacues 