“A la lune”, an invocation to the moon, is an evocative setting of a poem (in English) by William Carlos Williams that combines vivid imagery with an expressive and human element.

Composer’s Notes

When choosing a text, I am drawn to works in which I already sense color and, therefore, music. William Carlos Williams’s poetry often combines vivid imagery with an expressive and human element, and I find myself time and again coming back to his work. When I read many of his poems, I hear music already; in a sense, the pieces begin to write themselves.

As I wrote A la lune, I sought to enhance both the human narrative element and the colors within the words themselves. Certain words of this poem—slow, moon, aye, O, high, you—resonate so purely within the voice, and I chose sonorities to take full advantage. Additionally, the plaintive narrative of the poem, calling out to the moon to calm the unquiet mind, guided the larger-scale structure of the music. At times, I weave together individual lines using diatonic, whole tone, and octatonic materials. At others, homophonic harmonies swell and ebb to mirror the text.

– Mary Montgomery Koppel

Text

Slowly rising, slowly strengthening moon,
Pardon us our fear in pride:
Pardon us our troubled quietnesses!

Aye, pardon us, O moon,
Round, bright upon the darkening!
Pardon us our little journeys endlessly repeated!

All halting tendernesses pardon us,
O high moon!
For you, nooning by night,
You having crept to the full,
You, O moon, must have understanding of these things.

– William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)

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