A STAND OF PEOPLE
200o
for unaccompanied choir (ssaattbb)
written for the BBC Singers
duration: ca. 6 minutes
The text of this work includes two settings of poems by William Carlos Williams, as well as names of all the poets he translated during his lifetime. The two poems are "Autumn" (1937) and "Sonnet in search of an Author" (1962). In the center of the work, the names of the poets intermingle with fragments from the two poems in a dream-like fantasy. At the close of the work the names of all the poets are heard simultaneously, with the name ‘William Carlos Williams’ embedded in a duet between Alto II and Tenor I.
Autumn (1937)
A stand of people
by an open
grave underneath
the heavy leaves
celebrates
the cut and fill
for the new road
where
an old man
on his knees
reaps a basket-
ful of
matted grasses for
his goats.
Sonnet in search of an Author (1962)
Nude bodies like peeled logs
sometimes give off a sweetest
odor, man and woman
under the trees in full excess
matching the cushion of
aromatic pine-drift fallen
threaded with the trailing woodbine
a sonnet might be made of it
Might be made of it! odor of excess
odor of pine needles, odor of
peeled logs, odor of no odor
other than trailing woodbine that
has no odor, odor of a nude woman
sometimes, odor of a man.
The Names of the Poets:
Mexican: Mariano Del Alcazar, Lupercio de Argensola, Alí Chumacero, Alvaro Figueredo, Miguel Hernández, Rafael Beltran Logrono, Luis Palés Matos, Pablo Nerud, Silvina Ocampo, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz
French: Nicolas Calas, René Char, Paul Éluard, Yvan Goll
Chinese: Wang Ch’ang-Ling, Wang Chien, Ho Chih-Chang, Liu Chung-Yuan, Tu Fu, Meng Hao-Jan, Ping Hsin, Tsang K’o-Chia, Kuo Mo-Jo, Li Po, Mao Tse-Tung, Li Ts’un-Hsu, Wang Wei, Cho Wen-Chun, Li Yu
Greek: Sappho
