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About the Composer
Martha Hill Duncan
Graphite Publishing
A Season of Sensations (high voice)
Experience the 5 senses in dreams.
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A Season of Sensations
High voice and piano
Humans experience five sensations: vision, taste, aural, touch, and scent. What’s more, we can experience these senses in our dreams. “A Season of Sensations” explores this phenomenon in three new art songs by Martha Hill Duncan. A creative and colorful piano accompaniment swirls beneath the lyrical voice, providing both momentum and support. The vocal lines are skillfully written and remain in a moderate range, making all three songs great for a developing singer.
Composer’s Notes
From the composer:
In “Mirage,” I imagine shifting sand, billowing chiffon and an enticing siren’s song beckoning us into a dream oasis with “scented rosewater” and “out the other side to love.” We are brought back to a jolting reality at m. 32 where “truth emerges in the waking hour.” Here, the singer and pianist can emphasize the strongly syncopated melody, articulation, rests and dynamics to further contrast the smoother, more hypnotic dream sequence with the disappointing reality upon awakening.
In “High-Sun Summer,” I hoped to recreate that exhilarating “out of body” sensation when nature surprises us with simple, but stunning wonder. The singer should feel lifted and weightless across the arching, long lines of the piano accompaniment. “A door stands open” brings us back to earth, but with a new outlook and understanding.“Night closes over the moon hour” is the chance to grasp the experience and catch our breath. The challenge in the final song’s “tornadic activity” of dream fragments is to keep a musically cohesive and continuous flow, while juxtaposing the contrasting moods, tempos and changing imagery. My dream performance would be a dramatic, wild ride of sensation and emotional exhaustion.
– M.H. Duncan
From the Poet:
Dreams occupy a significant part of our lives, but we don’t always remember or take note of them. These poems explore the sometimes strange flow of seemingly disconnected images across our subconscious, as well as the various sensations upon waking. The poems also feature our five senses, all of which somehow can be experienced even in our sleep.
– Meg Freer
Text
1. Mirage
Come into my dream at dawn
through the flash of light, swim
in the blue behind my eyes,
while the scent of rosewater
drifts down our faces.
Come walk in the cool hollow
of my mind, through wisdom
and out the other side to love.
But truth emerges in the waking hour,
and you are not, and cannot, be with me,
the illusion uprooted, splintered
and buried, like a tree caught
off-guard by an avalanche.
“Absence makes the … .”
No—it’s just more
aching absence.
-Meg Freer
Note: An abbreviated version of this poem was published in The Ultra
Best Short Verse 2016–A Canadian Anthology of Poetry Compiled by
George Swede, Beret Days Press, 2016 (Ontario Poetry Society)
2. High-Sun Summer
I go into the midsummer night,
print its dense simplicity on my skin,
an alleluia from head to foot.
My voice deserts me,
words dress in silence,
a door stands open.
Night closes over the moon-hour,
and the little red rose that will perish
in the snow will bloom again.
-Meg Freer
Note: Different versions of this poem were previously published as
“Hedge Rose”: NatureWriting, posted online October 9, 2017, https://
www.naturewriting.com and as “high-sun summer” and “the world
returns with a shudder” at Another Way Round (the smallest) literary
journal (in Los Angeles), August 7, 2018, https://awrjournal.wixsite.com/
anotherwayround/poetry-meg-freer
the night hoards my dreams
swallows them whole
refuses to give them up
steals my mind’s natural appetite
desperate for scraps of meaning
traces of you everywhere nowhere
fleeting fragments
an arm
across my shoulders I want it
to stay a more personal message
I wear your jeans best of all
it makes you laugh dipping into a voice smooth
as crème brulée crisp on the surface
in a garden creeping thyme
purple carpet luscious under bare feet
tornadic activity ends
with breathtaking brevity
those were just dreams
this is true
I fold a four-leaf clover carefully in paper
place between pages of a favorite book
fold myself carefully into your future
-Meg Freer
Note: An abbreviated version of this poem was published in quatrain.
fish, online (four-line poems), March 7, 2018. The complete poem was
published in Sulphur: Poetry and Prose from Northern Ontario, 2018 issue
$8.00 per licensed PDF
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