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Joshua Shank
Joshua Shank (B&F Music)
Songs for Seven Days (cycle)
A secular cycle that uses the days of the week as a jumping off point. It uses traditional homophonic textures as well as extended vocal techniques.
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I met a man under the moon on a Sunday
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Hiroshima: a Monday
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A child suggested on a Tuesday
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Bright Wednesday afternoons
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On Thursday he leaves
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a fly and a mirror: this is a Friday
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Each Saturday evening
SATB, a cappella
This 7-movement choral song cycle uses a diverse set of texts that each feature a different day of the week. It starts in Rome on a Sunday before contemplating the Monday when the first deployment of nuclear weapons occurred. The Tuesday movement features a text about a kindergartner pondering what compassion means before moving into an exquisite poem by Emily Dickinson. The Thursday movement is about a young man taking a chance and is followed by a poem by E.E. Cummings about watching a fly move across a mirror. From Rome to Japan to a kindergarten classroom, the work ends in a humble American farmstead with a jaunty tune about a smitten farm boy.
Composer’s Notes
When Dr. Kevin Coker approached me about collaborating on a choral song cycle, we talked through many different themes that we felt might tie a set of pieces together. In a previous work, Color Madrigals, I had used the color wheel and texts by John Keats as a jumping-off point so, for this new cycle, we entertained various ways to do the same. The idea we hit upon that we thought might yield something interesting was a song cycle based around something entirely quotidian (literally): the days of the week. We sometimes see the week as a thing to make it through, but momentous events like the first atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and man’s first steps on the surface of the moon happened, boringly enough, on a Monday. But more personal stories—falling in love, having a child, losing a parent—can also happen to us no matter what day of the week it is. Thus, Songs for Seven Days was born.
To that end, I searched for texts that mentioned each day of the week and came up with some beautifully diverse offerings. Reading through E. E. Cummings’s collected works yielded poems crafted into grammatical puzzles for both Sunday and Friday. The first is a goofy text about an encounter with a man in Rome; the second a meditation about a fly walking across the glass that separates it from the reflective surface of a mirror. Robert W. Ressler offered up a contemplation about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945—including the haunting phenomenon of the “Hiroshima shadows”—as well as a sweet, little poem he based on an observation about friendship made on a Tuesday by a kindergartener he knew. The Wednesday song features an exquisite text by Emily Dickinson musing in her trademark voice and, for Thursday, I asked Austin, Texas-based singer/songwriter Shane Bartell if he might come up with something. He responded with a beautiful text about taking a chance and changing your surroundings in order to earnestly chase happiness. From Rome to Japan to a kindergarten classroom, Songs for Seven Days ends in a humble, American farmstead with a jaunty tune based on a text by 19th-century, African-American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, which details the story of a smitten farm boy going against the wishes of his father on a Saturday night.
– Joshua Shank
Text
XLVI
by E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
i met a man under the moon
on Sunday.
by way of saying
nothing he
smiled(but
just by the dirty collar of his
jacket were two glued uncarefully ears
In
that face a box of
skin lay eyes like
new tools
whence i guessed that he also had climbed the pincian
to appreciate rome at nightfall;and because against this
wall his white sincere small,
hands with their guessing fingers
did-not-move exquisitely
,like dead children
(if he had been playing a fiddle i had
been dancing:which is
why something about me reminded him of ourselves)
as Nobody came slowly over the town
The Earth was dropped on a Monday
by Robert W. Ressler (b. 1988)
The Earth was dropped
on a Monday
and a wound opened
Power betrayed slippery fingers
to let loose their stranglehold
to let fall a wailing ball.
Science possessed humanity
to split history, hearts, and homes
while we forget what it felt like
to be a child.
A peace, a paradise
that may never have existed
was lost; tossed
out the window of a plane
and what remains
are the delicate shadows
of flowers etched in white walls, and the
question.
A Child Suggested on a Tuesday
by Robert W. Ressler
A child suggested
on a Tuesday
that we help old ladies
by singing to them
that we help orphans
by giving them food
that we help our friends
by picking them up
when they fall down.
I never felt at Home—Below
by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
I never felt at Home—Below—
And in the Handsome Skies
I shall not feel at Home—I know—
I don’t like Paradise—
Because it’s Sunday—all the time—
And Recess—never comes—
And Eden’ll be so lonesome
Bright Wednesday Afternoons—
If God could make a visit—
Or ever took a Nap—
So not to see us—but they say
Himself—a Telescope
Perennial beholds us—
Myself would run away
From Him—and Holy Ghost—and All—
But there’s the “Judgement Day”!
On Thursday he leaves
by Shane Bartell (b. 1973)
On Thursday he leaves,
This time he believes.
Nothing can stop him,
No last minute reprieve.
He’ll sail far away.
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