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1. Ma Boheme cover
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About the Composer

Joshua Shank

The music of Boston-based composer, Joshua Shank (b. 1980), has been called “jubilant…ethereal” (Santa Barbara News-Press), “evocative and atmospheric” (Gramophone), and “emotionally charged” (Boston Classical Review).  He has been commissioned by organizations such as the Lorelei Ensemble, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the Choral Project, the American Choral Directors Association, and the Association for Music...

Joshua Shank (B&F Music)

Ma Bohème

Joshua Shank

A joyous celebration of a soul discovering what it wants in life.

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SATB a cappella

A joyous celebration of a soul discovering what it wants in life. This piece uses a text by French poet Arthur Rimbaud (who wrote the bulk of his work between the ages of 16 and 19). This piece would work well as a concert opener.

Composer’s Notes

Rimbaud’s desire to live the Bohemian life is portrayed in the first song as a joyous celebration of a soul discovering what it wants in life. I tried to keep the harmonic language light and the pacing quick in order to introduce the set as a whole. The music is garish and over-the-top as the poet (who wrote nearly all of his life’s work between the ages of 16 and 19) seems to disappear into the night with his newly discovered purpose.

Baquet de vin is informed by the harmonic language of Francis Poulenc as the angular leaps and harmonic jolts represent the staggering, back-and-forth walk of a person who may have had a bit too much to drink. That being said, it’s a happy drunken state and the setting ends on a warm and positive sonority.

Given the first line of poetry it seemed absurd to set the third poem without a soloist. Since self-pity is something that builds on and sustains itself to its own negative conclusions, I wrote a choral ostinato that turns over and over again while the soloist slowly sings the bulk of the text.

In order to give the choir some variety, I decided to use a piano for the final two movements. The first two and a half pages of La table et les deux verres bridge the gap between the chord-oriented, a cappella writing from the previous movements and the melodically driven remainder of the set. The text itself speaks to the first meeting of two people who eventually become lifelong friends and the eventual marriage of one of them. For the second half of the poem I wanted to write a running piano part to represent the inevitability of someone marrying their true love.

– Joshua Shank

Text

1. Ma Bohème

Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal;
J’allais sous le ciel, Muse!
et j’étais ton féal;
Oh! là là! Que d’amours splendides j’ai rêvées!

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
—Petit Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
—Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes,
Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes
De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur;

Où rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques,
Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques
De me souliers blessés, un pied près de mon cœur!

– Arthur Rimbaud

1. Ma Bohème

I went off, fists in my torn pockets;
My coat was becoming ideal;
I traveled under the sky, Muse!
and I was your companion;
Oh! What splendid loves I dreamed of!

My only pair of trousers had a big hole.
—Tom Thumb daydreaming, I planted some rhymes
along my path. My inn was at the Big Bear.
—My stars rustled softy in the sky.

And I listened to them, sitting on the side of the road,
In these fine September evenings where I felt some drops
Of dew on my forehead, like a strong wine;

Where, rhyming amidst fantastic shadows,
Like lyres, I plucked the laces
Of my wounded shoes, one foot close to my heart!

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