Rising – Convery, Voyages No. 5
Robert Convery – Voyages No. 5
Sunrise, Tuesday March 24
Piracy!
It's not very often we get to sing that word, and even less often we sing "argosy." But here we are, in the world according to poet Hart Crane: infrangible and lonely.
The sun is up, and the music's on!
That world is one that favors feeling over logic. In Crane's words, "The terms of expression employed are often selected less for their logical (literal) significance than for their associational meanings." His "logic of metaphor" left us unforgettable images:
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
And changed ... "
We may not know exactly what it means, but we recognize the feeling.
As promised, today we hear a different setting of the same text we heard yesterday; the fifth poem of Crane's Voyages, and the fifth movement of Benjamin Boyle's and Bob Convery's works of the same name. Unlike the broad gestures of Benjamin's Voyages, Bob's approach is compact and literal, setting every word, in order, more-or-less syllabically, revealing nuances in Crane's meters and devices. At first, the taut, rolling rhythms of Crane's nearly intoxicated verse is married to a harmonic language resulting from music that visually resembles mirrored reflections on the page - water is everywhere in this music about the sea. The delirium is interrupted by an outburst of angular waves - the obsessive, chaos of a relationship in tumult: Singing Bob's phrases in this chaos is like being flung about, thrashed against a rocky shore, crying over the thunder of the surf.
No,
In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
Nothing so flagless as this piracy.
We love to sing Bob's Voyages because each movement is an entire journey through Love. In this penultimate movement, the final stanza brings this part of the journey to a close in a momentary relief from the turbid realm of faltering love - relief in the form of a return to Bob's opening music, which now reminds us that the security of an embrace may be an illusion. The music feels inevitable and resigned - it seems to say, "even if it's just this final moment, let's live it." It accomplishes so much of what music can offer: a sea of perception and receiving, in which, perhaps, once again we recognize ourselves and are grateful for whatever the days, and the nights, bring.
Turbid. Tumult. Chaos. Lonely.
Words that carry newfound gravity.
But so does Love.
Be well. Stay off the argosies.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
Voyages
V.
music by Robert Convery
text by Hart Crane
recorded in concert at The Month of Moderns
June 17, 2018 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
commissioned by West Chester University and Donald Nally in 1993 for the West Chester University Concert Choir and premiered in May 1994.
* * *
V
Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast
Together in one merciless white blade–
The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.
–As if too brittle or too clear to touch!
The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,
Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
One frozen trackless smile ... What words
Can strangle this deaf moonlight? For we
Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword
Can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
And changed ... "There's
Nothing like this in the world," you say,
Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look
Too, into that godless cleft of sky
Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing.
"–And never to quite understand!" No,
In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
Nothing so flagless as this piracy.
But now
Draw in your head, alone and too tall here.
Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;
Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:
Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.