My first song cycle — advice and recommendations

Hi everyone,

I’m currently in the planning and sketching phase of an art song cycle, my first song cycle yet, for baritone and piano. I’m expecting it will take me around six months to complete. The cycle explores themes of distance, obsession, and the inadequacy of symbols when attempting to reach an absent Other. I’m going to be writing in a post-impressionist vein, with a tonal system of my own devising. I’m planning to coordinate pitch collections and tonal centers with symbolic themes and emotional atmosphere, kind of reminiscent of Wagner’s leitmotifs but subtler.

Do you have any advice about writing art songs/cycles? For instance, do you typically write the vocal line and accompaniment together, or do you write the vocal line first, perhaps with a bass line under? I know the harmony can’t be totally ignored at any stage of the process! Any recommendations? I’ll take anything I can learn!

Here are my selected texts. I’m aware it’s a diverse group of poems/poets, with varying meters and styles, but I tried to find some organic coherence between them.

I. Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths (W.B. Yeats) 

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 

Enwrought with golden and silver light, 

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 

Of night and light and the half light, 

I would spread the cloths under your feet: 

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; 

I have spread my dreams under your feet; 

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

II. When my soul touches yours (Rainier Maria Rilke) 

When my soul touches yours a great chord sings! 

How shall I tune it then to other things? 

O! That some spot in darkness could be found 

That does not vibrate whene'er your depths sound. 

But everything that touches you and me 

Welds us as played strings sound one melody. 

Where is the instrument whence the sounds flow? 

And whose the master-hand that holds the bow? 

O! Sweet song— 

III. You came down from your throne (Rabindranath Tagore) 

You came down from your throne  

and stood at my cottage door. 

I was singing all alone in a corner,  

and the melody caught your ear.  

You came down and stood at my cottage door. 

Masters are many in your hall,  

and songs are sung there at all hours.  

But the simple carol of this novice struck at your love.  

One plaintive little strain  

mingled with the great music of the world,  

and with a flower for a prize  

you came down and stopped at my cottage door.  

IV. Go, lovely rose (Edmund Waller) 

Go, lovely rose! 

Tell her that wastes her time and me, 

That now she knows, 

When I resemble her to thee, 

How sweet and fair she seems to be. 

Tell her that’s young, 

And shuns to have her graces spied, 

That hadst thou sprung 

In deserts, where no men abide, 

Thou must have uncommended died. 

Small is the worth 

Of beauty from the light retired; 

Bid her come forth, 

Suffer herself to be desired, 

And not blush so to be admired. 

Then die! that she 

The common fate of all things rare 

May read in thee; 

How small a part of time they share 

That are so wondrous sweet and fair! 

V. Look not in my eyes (A.E. Housman) 

Look not in my eyes, for fear 

They mirror true the sight I see, 

And there you find your face too clear 

And love it and be lost like me. 

One the long nights through must lie 

Spent in star-defeated sighs, 

But why should you as well as I 

Perish? gaze not in my eyes. 

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell, 

One that many loved in vain, 

Looked into a forest well 

And never looked away again. 

There, when the turf in springtime flowers, 

With downward eye and gazes sad, 

Stands amid the glancing showers 

A jonquil, not a Grecian lad. 

VI. The day is no more (Rabindranath Tagore) 

The day is no more,  

the shadow is upon the earth.  

It is time that I go to the stream to fill my pitcher. 

The evening air is eager with the sad music of the water.  

Ah, it calls me out into the dusk.  

In the lonely lane there is no passer-by,  

the wind is up, the ripples are rampant in the river. 

I know not if I shall come back home.  

I know not whom I shall chance to meet.  

There at the fording in the little boat  

the unknown man plays upon his lute. 

The water is dark,  

but the light of your eyes is still upon it.  

VII. Look now at the silver scales (Wojtyla) 

Look now at the silver scales in the water 

where the depth trembles  

like the retina of an eye recording an image. 

With the broad leaves' reflection  

touching your face  

water washes tiredness round your eyes. 

Still far from the spring. 

Tired eyes are the sign  

that the night's dark waters  

flow through words into prayer. 

(Consider how arid, how arid our souls.) 

The light from the well pulsates with tears:  

a gust of dreams,  

passers-by think, brought them down. 

The well sparkles with leaves that leap  

to your eyes. Reflected green  

glints round your face  

in the shimmering depth. 

How far to the spring? 

Multitudes tremble in you, transfixed  

by the light of your words  

as eyes by the brightness of water. 

You know them in weariness.  

You know them in light.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by CrystalCanon