If Soul May Look
Song Cycle
2004
19 minutes
MP3 samples from the premiere:
Stanza IV
The Lady’s Second Song (excerpt)
The Lover’s Song
The Chambermaids’s Song (excerpt)
Premiere: Kristin Dauphinais, mezzo soprano
Andrew Campbell, piano
Katzin Concert Hall, Arizona State University
October 25, 2004
There are two versions of the cycle:
Mezzo soprano and Piano
(mezzo range: a3 to a-flat 5)
Mezzo Soprano, Baritone, and Piano
(mezzo range: b-flat 3 to a-flat 5,
baritone range: a2 to g-flat 4)
Poems: William Butler Yeats
Composer Notes: Yeats’s poems retell a medieval story of a lady who cannot bear to give herself physically to her lover. She sends her chambermaid to his bed at night, with instructions there can be no speaking and no candles. Individual songs by the lady, the lover, and the chambermaid reveal that tensions remain, and only in death do all three finally rest together.