Non Sequitur Music Publishing: Wedding Songs

Wedding Songs for Voice and Orchestra

Play an excerpt from the the first movement, Force me prone love

Play an excerpt from the second movement, My eyes hold yours

Play an excerpt from the third movement, Your deafness is a dimension

Play an excerpt from the fourth movement, We tried to light a candle

Composer: James Aikman
Instrumentation: Singer (tenor or soprano), 2 flutes (1 dbl. alto flute), 2 clarinets in B-Flat (1 dbls. both bass clarinet and sop. saxophone), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet, 2 percussion (including timpani), piano, harp and strings
Year Composed: 1998
Duration: 17 minutes (4 songs)
Cost:

Rental: $200.00
Purchase: $250.00

Movements:
I. Force me prone love
II. My eyes hold yours
III. Your deafness is a dimension
IV. We tried to light a candle

Recording:

This piece can be heard on the CD white sunday light (music by James Aikman), available from amazon.com

Program Notes:

These songs are a gift to my dear friends, Thomas J. and Ania Beczkiewicz on the occassion of their 25th Anniversary. Tom wrote the poetry, published by the University of Louisville Press, 25 years ago in celebration of their union. The text follows:

Four Wedding Songs for Ania

Force me prone love, horizontal
so I can not see the shadows
turning backwards into seasons
before ours. But gently, gently.
You are at times almost too sharp:
A chromatic cascade or wave
of white Sunday Light
that
curves
reluctant to touch
my frightened earth before the
dazzling
second of your noon sings my spine
warm
for the look of you.

My eyes hold your like (mon dieu
you're fragile) violets fluttering
in an April wind,
exposed
under glaring day.
But you don't shrink nor
do violets - that's a myth -
but coyly
hang in gladdest garlands sure
sweetness of late Spring on
my
nose
and, my darling, make me close
my eyes till they match
the darkness (oh so cool, yes)
of violets and of you
and pray for night.

III

Your deafness is a dimension still
a rapt space circling
gravity, a vibrant
grace that can tune
its own spheres in a centrifugal Now.
You wait giving
your eyes only
that hear beyond
when suddenly they smile
across time's lightening
years to ring one star -

flung infinity of Yes

as you become word
and my eyes all ears.

We tried to light a candle
rather than to curse the dark
but there was no candle and
the darkness came and it was
kind and whispered a soft word we couldn't hear because we
were singing so loud that the
darkness left and even our
shadows danced and disappeared.

- T J Beczkiewicz

Non Sequitur Music Publishing
2112 Ontario Street
Bellingham, WA 98229
USA
(360) 733-7145
Email: nsm@nonsequiturmusic.com