Fork in the Road

After playing around with this chorus piece I am wondering if it would make a better sting ensamble piece. I could definately expand the range. The piece seems to have an awkward feel flow to it because it is being written to the poem Birches by Robert Frost. The feeling and mood conveyed by the words is tried to convey within the chordal structure of the piece. The poem is pretty long too. The strings would eliminate the words but it might be a better choice. Maybe I should just pick out the important prose in the poem to write for. I am stumped on the next step I should make, please help me.

-Sam

Birches.MUS

hmm. To answer that, I looked at the poem:

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.

Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

(Now am I free to be poetical?)

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows--

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

hmm, I'd imagine the piece describes the poem up to the boy swinging. Perhaps if you made a sudden change to something faster and angry sounding, to describe the blizzard, up to (and including) "You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen." Something like the fast movement of "Summer" in Vivaldi's four seasons is what I mean. This would eventually (as opposed to suddenly) change to a slower phrase, playing with the minor scale up (try and give a feel of sorrow) up to "Years after, trailing their leaves on the ground." I'm afraid I've not really got time right now to make you an example, but this would be how I proceed, using the poem as my guide.