Ophelia Floats

for soprano soloist and SSA chorus, with clarinet and piano (2020/2022)

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Duration: 14 minutes

Text: English translation by the composer of Arthur Rimbaud's “Ophélie”

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Program Note:

Ophelia Floats is a setting of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Ophélie” where the tragic figure drifts in eternally flowing water, carrying her, cradling her, rushing her to her end. The music unfolds around an imagined vocalise sung by Ophelia. Through this vocalise and variations, Ophelia exists in stasis—in a frozen moment of serenity—while the double tragedy of lost innocence and lost life ripples around her.

The music of Ophelia Floats is influenced by two of my musical loves: mélodie and chamber music of late-19th century and early-20th century France; as well as “emo” and pop-punk music from the late 1990s through the 2000s. Scales and modes from Fauré, Debussy, and Satie are synthesized with textures and chord progressions from bands and artists like Dashboard Confessional, Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, and Something Corporate. Fin-de-siècle France blends with turn-of-the-century America; emo-pop meets belle époque.

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Premiere:

Inversion Ensemble: Da Capo, Adrienne Pedrotti Bingamon, dir.
Maureen Broy Papovich & Katrina Saporsantos, soprano soloists

Brendan Fairleigh, clarinet; Joseph Choi, piano

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas
January 21st, 2023

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Text:

   I  .

On the calm black water where the stars sleep

White Ophelia floats like a great lily;

Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…

–You hear in the distant woods the sound of the hunt.

For more than a thousand years the sad Ophelia,

She passed, a white phantom, down the long black river;

For more than a thousand years her sweet madness,

It murmured its romance to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath

Her great veils softly cradled by the waters;

The trembling willows weep on her shoulder,

Over her wide dreaming brow the reeds bend down.

The ruffled water lilies sigh all around her;

At times she awakens, among the sleeping branches,

Some nest, from which escapes a slight rustle of wings;

–A mysterious song falling from golden stars.

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     II.

O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!

Yes, you died child, carried off by a river!

–The falling winds in low voices

Spoke to you of bitter freedom;

It was a breath, twisting your great hair,

That bore strange rumors to your dreaming mind;

It was your heart listening to Nature’s song

In the complaints of trees and in the sighs of the night;

It was the voice of mad seas, a great noise,

That broke your child’s heart, too human and too soft;

It was a knight, so handsome and pale, a poor fool,

Who, one April morning, sat mute at your knees!

Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, you poor, mad girl!

You melted to him as snow does to fire;

Your great visions strangled your words

–And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eyes!

     III.

–And the Poet says that under the stars’ rays

You come at night looking for the flowers you picked;

And that he saw on the water, lying in her long veils,

White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

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