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Saunder Choi
Saunder Choi Music
In May
A poignant musical journey intertwining poetry, nostalgia, and lost love – setting Paul Laurence Dunbar’s A Golden Day with Heinrich Heine’s Im wunderschönen Monat Mai.
SATB a cappella
“In May” is a captivating musical piece that contrasts the joyousness of Thomas Morley’s madrigal with the heartfelt longing of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s A Golden Day and Heinrich Heine’s Im wunderschönen Monat Mai. It is an emotional journey that intertwines poetry and music to explore the complex emotions of lost love.
Composer’s Notes
In May is written as a contrasting companion piece to Thomas Morley’s joyous madrigal Now is the Month of Maying.
This piece sets Paul Laurence Dunbar’s A Golden Day, a poem that captures the multilayered emotions associated with remembering a lost love. Dunbar’s text is then interrupted by Heinrich Heine’s Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (most famously set by Robert Schumann in his Dichterliebe song cycle), launching into the dream-like state of “remembering the good times.” We are then transported back to loss and grief, as Dunbar’s text is juxtaposed with a repeated Verlangen — “longing” or “desire” — indicating that one has not quite moved on from this state of lost love.
This work was commissioned by The Golden Bridge, Suzi Digby, artistic director, and generously sponsored by Emily and Michael Laskin. The world premiere was given at All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, CA on February 19, 2022
– Saunder Choi
Text
A Golden Day
I Found you and I lost you,
All on a gleaming day.
The day was filled with sunshine,
And the land was full of May.
A golden bird was singing
Its melody divine,
I found you and I loved you,
And all the world was mine.
I found you and I lost you,
All on a golden day,
But when I dream of you, dear,
It is always brimming May.
– Paul Laurence Dunbar
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Knospen sprangen,
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe aufgegangen.
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Vögel sangen,
Da hab’ ich ihr gestanden
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen
– Heinrich Heine
Translation:
In the wonderfully beautiful month of May
In the wonderfully beautiful month of May
When all the buds are bursting open,
There, from my own heart,
Bursts forth my own love.
In the wonderfully beautiful month of May
When all the birds are singing,
So have I confessed to her
My yearning and my longing.
– trans. Paul Hindemith
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