Senior Recital
Sydney Mancasola, soprano
Friday
April 29, 2011, 6:30 pm
Kulas Recital Hall
Concert No. 332
Daniel Michalak, piano
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D. 965
Franz Schubert
(1797–1828)
Zachary Good, clarinet
Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse
Pantomime (Verlaine)
Clair de Lune (Verlaine)
Pierrot (Th. de Banville)
Apparition (Mallarmé)
Claude Debussy
(1862–1918)
Pause
Nantucket Songs
I.
From Whence Cometh Song (Roethke)
II. The Dance (Williams)
III. Nantucket (Williams)
VII. Fear of Death (Ashbery)
VIII. Thoughts of a Young Girl (Ashbery)
IX. Ferry Me Across the Water (Rossetti)
X. The Dancer (Waller)
Breit über mein Haupt (von Schack)
Schlechtes Wetter (Heine)
Einerlei (von Arnim)
Kling! (Henckell)
Ned Rorem
(b. 1923)
Richard Strauss
(1864–1949)
Please silence all cell phones and refrain from the use of video cameras
unless prior arrangements have been made with the performers.
The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.
Translations
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen
When, upon the highest rock I stand, and look down into the deep valley, and sing:
Far out of the deep dark valley the echo soars upward out of the ravines.
The farther my voice penetrates, the clearer it echoes back to me from below.
My sweetheart lives so far from me, therefore I long so passionately for her, over there.
I am consumed by deep grief, for me all joy is gone.
All hope on earth retreats from me, I am so lonely here.
So longingly sounded the song in the woods, so longingly it sounded through the night,
it draws the hearts toward heaven, with wondrous power.
The springtime will come,
The springtime, my friend
The springtime, my joy,
Now I prepare myself for the journey.
Pantomime
Pierrot, who is nothing like Clitandre,
empties a bottle without ado,
and, ever practical, cuts into a paté.
Cassandre, at the end of the avenue,
sheds a concealed tear
for his disinherited nephew.
That impertinent Harlequin schemes
The abduction of Columbine
And whirls around four times.
Colombine dreams, surprised
at feeling a heart in the breeze
and at hearing voices in her heart.
Clair de Lune
Your soul is a chosen landscape
charmed by masquers and revelers
playing the lute and dancing and almost
sad beneath their fanciful disguises!
Even while singing, in a minor key,
of victorious love and fortunate living
they do not seem to believe in their happiness,
and their song mingles with the moonlight,
the calm moonlight, sad and beautiful,
which sets the birds in the trees dreaming,
and makes the fountains sob with ecstasy,
the tall slender fountains among the marble statues!
Pierrot
Good old Pierrot, at whom the crowd gapes,
having concluded Harlequin’s wedding
walks along the Boulevard du Temple, lost in thought.
A girl in a supple garment
vainly teases him with a mischievous look;
And meanwhile, mysterious and smooth,
taking her sweetest delight in him,
the white moon, bull-horned,
throws a furtive glance
and her friend Jean Gaspard Duburau
Apparition
The moon was saddened. Seraphims in tears
dreaming, bows at their fingers, in the calm of filmy flowers
Threw dying violas of white sobs
sliding over the blue of corollas.
It was the blessed day of your first kiss;
My reverie, loving to torture me,
wisely imbibed itse perfume of sadness
That even without regret and without setback
leaves the gathering of a dream within the heart that gathered it.
I wandered then, my eye riveted on the aged cobblestones.
and in the evening, you appeared to me smiling
and I thought I had seen the fairy with a hat of light
who passed in my sweet dreams as a spoiled child,
always dropping from her carelessly closed hand
a snow of white bouquets of perfumed stars.
From Whence Cometh Song
From whence cometh song? –
From the tear, far away,
From the hound giving tongue,
From the quarry’s weak cry.
From whence, love?
From the dirt in the street,
From the bolt stuck in its groove,
From the cur at my feet.
Whence death?
From dire hell’s mouth,
From the ghost without breath,
The wind shifting south.
The Dance
In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round,
they go round and around,
the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes,
a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies
(round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them.
Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts,
those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures,
prance as they dance in Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess.
Nantucket
Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow
changed by white curtains –
Smell of cleanliness –
Sunshine of late afternoon –
On the glass tray
a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which
a key is lying – And the
immaculate white bed.
Fear of Death
What is it now with me
And is it as I have become?
Is there no state free from the boundary lines
Of before and after? The window is open today
And the air pours in with piano notes
In its skirts, as though to say, “Look, John,
I’ve brought these and these” – that is,
A few Beethovens, some Brahmses,
A few choice Poulenc notes…Yes,
It is being free again, the air, it has to keep coming back
Because that’s all it’s good for.
I want to stay with it out of fear
That keeps me from walking up certain steps,
Knocking at certain doors, fear of growing old
Alone, and of finding no one at the evening end
Of the path except another myself
Nodding a curt greeting: “Well, you’ve been awhile
But now we’re back together, which is what counts.”
Air in my path, you could shorten this,
But the breeze had dropped, and silence is the last word.
Thoughts of a Young Girl
“It is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter
From the tower, and to show I’m not mad:
I only slipped on the cake of soap of the air
And drowned in the bathtub of the world.
You were too good to cry much over me.
And now I let you go.” Signed, The Dwarf.
I passed by late in the afternoon
And the smile still played about her lips
As it has for centuries. She always knows
How to be utterly delightful. Oh my daughter,
My sweetheart, daughter of my late employer, princess,
May you not be long on the way!
Ferry Me Across the Water
“Ferry me across the water,
Do boatman, do.”
“If you’ve a penny in your purse
I’ll ferry you.”
“I have a penny in my purse,
And my eyes are blue;
So ferry me across the water,
Do, boatman, do!”
“Step into my ferry-boat,
Be they black or blue,
And for the penny in your purse
I’ll ferry you.”
The Dancer
Behold the brand of beauty tossed!
See how the motion does dilate the flame!
Delighted love his spoils does boast,
And triumph in this game.
Fire, to no place confined,
Is both our wonder and our fear;
Moving the mind,
As lightning hurled through the air.
High heaven the glory does increase
Of all her shining lamps, this artful way;
The sun, in figures such as these,
Joys with the moon to play;
To the sweet strains they advance,
Which do result from their own spheres,
As this nymph’s dance
Moves with the numbers which she hears.
Breit über mein Haupt dein schwarzes haar
Spread over my head your black hair,
and incline to me your face,
so that into my soul, so brightly and clearly,
will stream your eye’s light.
I do not want the splendor of the sun above,
nor the glittering crown of stars;
I want only the night of your locks
and the radiance of your gaze.
Schlechtes Wetter
It is terrible weather:
it’s raining and storming and snowing;
I sit at the window and gaze
out into the darkness.
There, a lonely light is gleaming,
and it moves slowly onward;
a little old woman with a lantern
totters across the street there.
Flour and eggs, I think,
and butter – she has bought;
she plans to bake a cake
for her big darling daughter
She is lying at home in an armchair
and she blinks sleepily in the light;
her golden curls straying
over her sweet face.
Einerlei
His mouth is always the same,
his kiss is always new to me,
his eyes yet unchanged,
their boundless gaze true to me.
oh you loving sameness,
how do you become so many things!
Kling!
My soul gives a pure sound,
and I imagined the poor one
from the raging affliction
of turbulent times already torn.
Sing, my soul the confession song
of reclaimed abundance!
Lift from the heart the hood!
Hail to thee, purified inward sound!
Resound, my soul, resound your life,
resound, flowing, fresh creation.
Beauty begins to prosper
on the hardened field
Resound, my soul, resound!