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Joshua Shank
Graphite Publishing
Serpents in Red Roses Hissing
A choral fanfare with a quiet introspective ending.
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Color Madrigals
SATB choir, piano
from the cycle Color Madrigals
“Serpents in Red Roses Hissing” is the first movement of Joshua’s 6-movement choral song cycle, Color Madrigals, and uses a poem by John Keats as its text. The work begins with a choral fanfare before settling into a quiet introspective ending. This movement is advanced high school choirs as well as above.
Composer’s Notes
Performance Notes
Because of the tight harmonies, little to no vibrato is desirable.
Take a breath only when indicated by a rest.
If a crescendo appears without a starting/ending dynamic it is based on the treatment of the text.
Program Notes
This text starts off very simply as an exercise in dichotomy: every line contains two things which are diametrically opposed to one another. Keats takes this principle and seemingly works himself into a rhythmic frenzy until his poem sounds more like a witch’s incantation than a piece of poetry. But then, at line 23 (“O the sweetness of the pain!”), it suddenly turns into a beautiful elegy as he calls upon the Muses. After all this Keats ends up very simply in passion and sorrow over the grave of his beloved—a beautiful (and very human) ending to a poem that spends most of its energy invoking the gods.
Text
A Song of Opposites
Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe’s weed and Hermes’ feather;
Come today, and come tomorrow,
I do love you both together!
I love to mark sad faces in fair weather,
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder.
Fair and foul I love together:
Meadows sweet where flames burn under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomime;
Funeral, and steeple chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and stormwrecked hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dressed
With the aspics at her breast
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and Muses pale;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale.
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again—
O the sweetness of the pain!
Muses bright, and Muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil!
Let me see! and let me write
Of the day and of the night—
Both together. Let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heartache!
Let my bower be of yew,
Interwreathed with myrtles new;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass tomb.
– John Keats (England, 1795-1821)
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