Clare Shore - Grave Numbers

Clare Shore's Grave Numbers,
for voice and guitar (or vibraphone) (1988)

Grave Numbers was premiered on the AMERICAN COMPOSERS: THEIR MUSIC
AND THEIR MUSES series at Strathmore Hall Arts Center, Bethesda, Maryland,
on October 7, 1988, by Marilyn Boyd DeReggi, soprano; and David Perry, guitar.

Listen to Grave Numbers - I. Grave Numbers

Listen to Grave Numbers - II. Alzheimers

Program Notes

Grave Numbers for voice and guitr (or vibraphone) sets to music four poems of
Blanche Farley from a chapbook bearing the same title.
In the first song, "Grave Numbers", a mother speaks to her child from the grave.
The second song, "Alzheimers", is a musical depiction of the chaos and anxiety brought about
by the disease as well as the frustration and anger experienced by the primary caregiver.
"Alder Moon", which follows, is a statement of despair and hopelessness
that accompanies the realization of the finality of death.
"Self-Healing" invites the reader/listener to revel in the cyclical phenomenon of nature;
"...one day soon the sun will shift and knit the raw edges...".

Ms. Farley writes about the poems:

+ When I read a collection of women's journals, geared from before the Civil War to the present, I was
caught by the humor and pathos of these lines, which were written in a nursing home:

Poor L.M. distressed this morning because they wouldn't let her telephone her mother in the grave.
She knew the number to call too.*

           + While the absurdity of a telephone number in the grave is obvious, the idea also has the clarity and
        directness which is present in dreams. It was this combination of absurdity and tragedy, cast in a dreamlike
          context, that I wanted to capture.

+ Other "grave numbers" evolved – poems dealing with literal graves as well as with grave subjects: the
onslaught of disease and old age, the feeling of hopelessness which accompanies them.

+ But nature, too, informs these pieces. By turning to the natural world we sometimes find a way to heal,
a way to make the journey back to life, to wholeness.

*Joyce Mary Horner, from A Day at a Time, edited by Margo Cully, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1985.

Publisher

E.C. Schirmer Music Company, Inc.
(available from (sheetmusicplus.com)
or call E.C. Schirmer toll-free:1-800-777-1919

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(after listening to each, click on "back" arrow to return to this page)

(click here to see more information about Cool Spring Meditations)

Click here to listen to an excerpt from I. Matins
Click here to listen to an excerpt from II. Lauds
Click here to listen to an excerpt from III. Vespers
Click here to listen to an excerpt from IV. Compline

Michael Rosensky, guitar

To order score and/or parts, call E.C. Schirmer toll-free: 1-800-777-1919

Biography Reviews Works Recordings Listening Room Publisher Info Links Main Page

design by Watchfyr Productions
(561) 585-2772watchfyr@aol.com