Product Description:
PDF score of The Rocking Chair
Program Note:
The Rocking Chair is an art song with a text by my friend, Carolyn Quick, and was composed for Edwin Johnson, a young transgender voice student of Dr. Sarah Maines who recently started testosterone. Within the text, I was struck by Carolyn’s use of three-line stanzas, which used language and enjambment to underscore the rocking motion of a rocking chair. The singer could happen upon this rocking chair, with its “oaken beams and brittle bark,” at many points in their life, creating an opportunity for self-reflection and to grieve for themselves, allowing for the piece to have the potential to have an interpretation that can grow and change with the singer.
Recording:
Score:
Instrumentation:
Mezzo/Baritone Voice & Piano
Text:
The Rocking Chair
In this still,
I sit upon a quiet throne
Of oaken beams and brittle bark –
So gently it is swaying
Discordant with the passing days,
All memories are hung.
Silence falls,
I breathe an icy reverie,
Such shadows poised in reverence.
The rocking chair is bursting,
No spring or switch to turn about,
And with the dawn I wake.
-Carolyn Quick (2016)
