Скачать или смотреть I Am in Need of Music by Thomas Parente

I Am in Need of Music
2/29/20 the magnificent 115 voice Harmonium Choral Society under incredible maestra Anne Matlock, debuted the piece



After losing my sister, Debbie, to mental illness in 2016, I found myself unconsciously and mysteriously drawn to women poets who suffered and died similarly. In retrospect, I am sure that it was a way for me to attempt to understand the unfathomable. In 2017, I composed and published three songs by the great American poet Sara Teasdale and shortly thereafter I found this magnificent sonnet, which profoundly spoke to me, by the equally monumental poet, Elizabeth Bishop. The feelings engendered by the poem’s reference to the “subaqueous stillness of the sea" and being "held in the arms of rhythm and sleep” seemed to rise to me as if from another eternal world. One line that was particularly poignant and resonant was “Oh for the healing swaying, old and low of some song sung to rest the tired dead.” Bishop’s words proved to be tragically prophetic for her but for me they were, in an odd way, soothing in that they helped pave the way towards understanding, acceptance and healing as my sister had finally found the peace that had eluded her in life.


I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody deep and clear and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over my quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.