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About the Composer
Timothy C. Takach
Timothy C. Takach Publications
Rough Beast
A ferocious confrontation of profane and sacred.
TTBB, percussion (bongos, 3 toms, bass drum, shaker)
A ferocious take on Yeats’ famous poem, Takach’s TTBB writing in “Rough Beast” is some of his finest. Rich harmonies color the halting percussive vocal rhythms throughout, and the range of the tenor and bass voices are used to great effect. This piece can be performed with or without percussion, but the accompanying drums certainly add an intensity and sense of urgency to the text. Many of the vocal lines are chromatic, but well-written voice leading makes them accessible to the singers.
“Rough Beast” is at home as a centerpiece of your program, and pairs well with Samuel Barber’s “Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map” and Bob Chilcott’s “Five Ways to Kill a Man.”
Composer’s Notes
I had “The Second Coming” on my list of poems to set for over a decade. I was afraid to set it, since it is such a well-known poem, and also I had heard Joni Mitchell do a gripping version on her “Travelogue” album that was awesome and fully orchestrated. But when Jeremy and I were disucssing texts I had to throw this one in the mix because it’s such a great fit for men’s voices.
I love the images Yeats calls forth, whether they’re read as biblical, apocalyptic or war-inspired metaphor. I think the sci-fi nut in me kind of wants this beast to exist somewhere. I suppose it does, within this words of the poem and the notes of this piece. However you interpret this poem, one thing that is true across all meanings is a confronation of the profane with the sacred. A world falling apart. The loss of morality and responsibility. The poisoning of a Christian dogma. The coming of a beast.
I didn’t listen to Joni Mitchell’s version for years so that one day, if I did end up setting this poem, I wouldn’t be too strongly influenced. Now I can stop skipping that track.
– Timothy C. Takach
Text
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!
Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
– William Butler Yeats, 1919
$1.60 per licensed PDF
Music from Timothy C. Takach Publications
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After Harvest (from The Longest Nights)
Difficulty: 2Duration: less than 3 min. -
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Go
Difficulty: 2Duration: less than 3 min.
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