“Burnt Norton” for soprano, piano, and crotales (2018)
Program Note
This piece for soprano, piano, and crotales sets the opening of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton” (1936), exploring the rarified and time-twisted world Eliot creates through the story of a rose garden haunted by absences. The piece was composed for the spring 2018 residency of Estelí Gomez at the University of Oregon.
In Eliot’s poem, you, the reader, explore a secret rose garden where you may walk passages of time not taken. The garden is haunted by absences: unheard birdcalls, untrod leaves, and gradually you realize that garden is filled with unseen guests too, echoes of yourself visible only in the reflected sunlight. You catch a momentary glimpse, and a bird implores you to leave, saying, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
Excerpts from TS Eliot’s “Burnt Norton”, from Four Quartets.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through our first gate,
Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure through the vibrant air,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.