Program Notes

Based on texts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Libby Larsen's Sonnets from the Portuguese was commissioned by singer Arlene Auger. Of this collaboration Larsen writes: "I met Arlene Auger in 1988 through our mutual friend, Joel Revzen. It was April, morel mushroom hunting time in Minnesota, and that is what we talked about for the better part of our first meeting-mushroom hunting, nature, the human spirit, music and the energy which takes us beyond our natural lives. Arlene spoke to me about her love of the art song repertoire. She talked about love and life and her desire that I compose a work which spoke about the finding of mature love. She wished to create with me a cycle of songs which were in contrast to the young girl's feeling for the promise of love in Framed Lieben and Leben. Arlene told me that the poetry she most loved was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. She admired the fact that within the stylized and romantic language lived a creative woman grappling with issues that still engulf modern women. What part of her voice must she sacrifice to the lover and to the world? Will the sacrifice be reciprocated? Can her essence survive? Browning at times soars to heights of daring-demanding the world take her as she is. At other moments her selfconfidence wavers. Ultimately she realizes-as we must-that love and death demand constant faith in the leaps life requires.

"The opening bars of the work introduce a musical motif constructed to include suspension and unexpected resolution. The juxtaposition of resolved and unresolved also appears in a repeated chordal pattern of alternating fifths (resolved) and thirds (less resolved). These two basic musical ideas permeate the songs, defining the structure and providing context for Browning's sonnets."

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair:
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--
'Guess now who holds thee ? '--' Death,' I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang,--' Not Death, but Love.'

5.Oh, yes ! they love through all this world of ours !
I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.
I have heard love talked in my early youth,
And since, not so long back but that the flowers
Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours
Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth
For any weeping. Polypheme's white tooth
Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers,
The shell is over-smooth,--and not so much
Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate
Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such
A lover, my Beloved ! thou canst wait
Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch,
And think it soon when others cry ' Too late.'

6.How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life !--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death..

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