Leonardo Saw the Spring (2019)

for Flute and Piano

Duration: 11:30 minutes

 

Commission: Sophia Tegart; Washington State University

Premiere: Sophia Tegart, flute; Michael Seregow, piano 2019 Festival of Contemporary Art Music, March 2, 2019

 

Program Notes:

 

Many of my compositions have been inspired by poetry. Many poets in turn have been inspired by visual art, creating what is called ekphrastic poetry in which vivid and often dramatic descriptions of visual works of art form the basis of the poetry. To have both, the poetic interpretation and the visual art upon which it was based, created another inspirational layer to my creative process. “Leonardo Saw the Spring” takes as its inspiration the ekphrastic poem “Drawing of Roses and Violets” which in turn was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Studies of Flowers. The poem was published in 1892 as part of a collection of thirty-one poems depicting paintings exhibited in European art galleries. The collection entitled “Sight and Song” was published by Michael Field which was the joint pseudonym of collaborative poets and lovers Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper. In the preface the authors state: “The aim of this little volume is, as far as may be, to translate into verse what the lines and colours of certain chosen pictures sing in themselves; to express not so much what these pictures are to the poet, but rather what poetry they objectively incarnate.” This too is my aim with “Leonardo Saw the Spring” – to find the music that is innately embedded in the lines of the poetry and drawing.

“Leonardo Saw the Spring” was commissioned by flutist Sophia Tegart with support by a Washington State University New Faculty Seed Grant.

Leonardo Saw the Spring (2019) for Flute and Piano
I. Leonardo Saw the Spring 
II. Leonardo Drew the Blooms 
III. Leonardo Loved the Still 
IV. Leonardo Drew in Spring

Drawing of Roses and Violets

LEONARDO SAW THE SPRING 
Centuries ago, 
Saw the spring and loved it in its flowers— 
Violet, rose : 
One that grows 
Mystic, shining on the tufted bowers, 
And burns its incense to the summer hours ; 
And one that hiding low, 
Half-face, half-wing, 
With shaded wiles 
Hides and yet smiles.

LEONARDO DREW THE BLOOMS 
On an April day : 
How his subtle pencil loved its toil, 
Loved to draw ! 
For he saw 
In the rose's amorous, open coil 
Women's placid temples that would foil 
Hearts in the luring way 
That checks and dooms 
Men with reserve 
Of limpid curve. 

LEONARDO LOVED THE STILL 
Violet as it blows, 
Plucked it from the darkness of its leaves, 
Where it shoots 
From wet roots ; 
Found in it the precious smile that weaves 
Sweetness round Madonna's mouth and heaves 
Her secret lips, then goes, 
At its fine will, 
About her face 
He loved to trace. 

LEONARDO DREW IN SPRING, 
Restless spring gone by, 
Flowers he chose should never after fade 
For the wealth
Of strange stealth 
In the rose, the violet's half-displayed, 
Mysterious smile within the petals' shade 
That season did not die, 
Like everything, 
Of ruin's blight 
And April's flight.

From “Sight and Song” (1892) by Michael Field (pseud.)