Songs of Mystical Love
(1999)

based on poems by St. John of the Cross in their English translations by Willis Barnstone

Commissioned by:
The Alexandria Choral Society
for its 30th Anniversary Gala Celebration at the Kennedy Center

Instrumentation:
    a cappella SATB (with frequent divisi)

Duration:
    four songs, ca. 10:00

Program Notes

In the late 1970s, a slim volume of poetry was given to me:  “The Poems of St. John of the Cross,” featuring English translations of the original Spanish by Willis Barnstone, eminent scholar and poet.  Not being fluent in Spanish, I read the translations, there finding verses of such devotion, passion, and sensuality that I could not resist attempting to set several of these translated texts to music.  My attempts proved frustrating, as I – then in my mid-20s – was too inexperienced as a composer to fashion a musical language appropriately matched to Barnstone’s exquisitely lyrical translations.  After several months and many stumped hours at the desk, I put away the texts, concluding that I needed an unknown number of years of composition experience before once again attempting to set these words to music.  So as each year passed, I would revisit St. John’s poetry, hoping that I would be ready; and as each year passed, I found that I was not.

Kerry Krebill, artistic director of the Alexandria Choral Society, approached me in the summer of 1998 with the idea of commissioning a new piece for the Alexandria Choral Society’s 30^th Anniversary.  I eagerly accepted the project and began scanning for text materials.  As I had always assumed the St. John poems would be set for solo voice and piano, I did not consider them as potential texts for an a cappella choral setting. Nevertheless, the texts found their way out of my file cabinet and into my hands.  I sat at the piano, recalibrated my ear from solo voice with piano to unaccompanied chorus – and, happily, out came the music I had waited to hear for twenty years.

In the words of Willis Barnstone, from his introduction to The Poems of St. John of the Cross*:

“In San Juan we feel the deepest, most withdrawn sense of solitude, though his theme was union.  He sought freedom from the senses although his own poems comprise the most intensely erotic literature written in the Iberian peninsula from the time of the Moors to Garcia Lorca.  Although he was a monk who had taken vows of chastity, his allegory to express oneness with an absolute being was the sexual climax of lovers….  San Juan was persecuted during his lifetime, tortured and crippled by his accusers.  Yet he is said to have been a man of unshakable equanimity, without rancor.  Unlike those of Fray Luis, his poems were of joy rather than resentment….  They never shout, are never wild or inflated; they are precise, and express beauty and intense passion with simple ease….  No poet in the West has traveled so thoroughly in the bright and black air of ecstasy.”  

* From the introduction to The Poems of St. John of the Cross, published by New Directions Books.  To see the Amazon.com list of books of poetry and translations by Willis Barnstone, including his translations of St. John of the Cross, click here.

For information on rental or purchase of choral/rehearsal scores to Songs of Mystical Love, please contact me via email.

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