Shop for Music
About the Composer
Carol Barnett
Carol Barnett (Beady Eyes)
Mother (from Longing for Home)
A long-delayed visit home, remembering what used to be, regretting not having come sooner, and finally, reassurance of a sort in the memory of her voice.
-
Longing for Home
-
Jerusalem
-
Voyager Dust
-
A Letter to Marianne Moore
-
Dancing Toward the Promised Land
mezzo-soprano, piano
from the cycle Longing for Home
The music mirrors the unsettled sadness of a daughter’s long-delayed visit home, now bereft of its center of gravity. Memories of beloved rituals, of a sympathetic ear, are brought to life once more by the nearness of familiar objects, and finally, the almost tangible sound of her mother’s voice: “You’re a big girl now. You can work it out.”
Composer’s Notes
Bea Exner Liu was born and raised in Northfield, Minnesota, and graduated from Carleton College. She moved to China in 1935 to teach English, since teaching positions were scarce in the United States during the Depression. While there, she married a Chinese classmate from Carleton, and witnessed the Japanese invasion of China during the years 1935 to 1945. The eventuality of a Communist takeover finally brought Liu and her family back to Minnesota. I found her poem in an anthology titled Looking for Home: Women Writing about Exile.
Mother is the second of five songs comprising Longing for Home, a cycle written to celebrate Source Song Festival’s fifth season. The texts all reference homecoming in various ways – the enduring wish to return to a place remembered with love and longing, as well as the uncertainty, the impossibility of doing so.
Text
Mother
I wish that I could talk with her again.
That’s what I thought of when I thought of home,
Always supposing I had a home to come to.
If she were here, we’d warm the Chinese pot
To brew a jasmine-scented elixir,
And I would tell her how my life has been—
All the parts that don’t make sense to me,
And she would let me talk until the parts
Fitted together.
That will never be.
She couldn’t wait for me to come to her—
Ten years away. I couldn’t wish for her
To wait, all blind and helpless as she was.
So now I have come home to emptiness:
No silly welcome-rhyme, no happy tears,
No eager questioning. No way to get
An answer to my questions. Silence fills
The rooms that once were vibrant with her song,
And all the things I wanted to talk out
With her are locked forever in my heart.
I wander through the rooms where she is not.
Alone I sit on the hassock by her chair,
And there, at last, I seem to hear her voice:
“You’re a big girl now. You can work things out.”
– Bea Exner Liu (1907-1997)
$7.50 per licensed PDF
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.