PROGRAM NOTE

Encompassing roughly 2900 poems, a novel, four plays, essays and drawings, American poet e. e. cummings is today recognized as a preeminent voice in 20th century poetry. His works innovated syntax structures allowing for a crafty new approach in combinatorial phrasing. Often satirical, romantic, and mischievous, his aesthetic runs the gamut of total human expression. Five Songs, is scored for Soprano, String Quartet and Piano. Although the poems selected are taken not from one collection, but from different collections written at different times, the poems contain a reminiscence of familiarity. Thus the work employs a single four-pitch motive that is imposed upon each movement’s unique material, offering a new light or transfigured impression of the motive. The text is often subtle and at times absurdly direct. The poems in whole reflect a journey, not necessarily of ones life but a journey through which the one has gained an intangible purpose that was not present before.