Two New E.E. Cummings Settings (With Recording!)
Here’s a live recording of the extraordinary National Youth Choir of Great Britain performing the two new E.E. cummings settings. Tali Tadmor is playing piano; I’m conducting:
I’m calling the piano part in these pieces the ‘oven-mitt’ technique, because most of the chords are white-key clusters played as if you are wearing mitts on your hands – the four fingers all bunched together and the thumb on its own, like this:
I’ve really fallen in love with this style, so I’m definitely going to expand this set to include five or six E.E. Cummings settings – all of them using some variation on the ‘oven-mitt’ technique. Try it at the piano… it’s so much fun to play!
Here is a re-post ‘first look’ at page two from each piece (both pieces have piano intros on page one):
the moon is hiding in her hair pg 2
And here are the poems I’ve set (thus far):
the moon is hiding in her hair
the moon is hiding in
her hair.
The
lily
of heaven
full of all dreams,
draws down.
cover her briefness in singing
close her with intricate faint birds
by daisies and twilights
Deepen her,
Recite
upon her
flesh
the rain’s
pearls singly-whispering.
E.E. Cummings
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i walked the boulevard
i walked the boulevard
i saw a dirty child
skating on noisy wheels of joy
pathetic dress fluttering
behind her a mothermonster
with red grumbling face
cluttered in pursuit
pleasantly elephantine
while nearby the father
a thick cheerful man
with majestic bulbous lips
and forlorn piggish hands
joked to a girlish bore
with busy rhythmic mouth
and silly purple eyelids
of how she was with child
E.E. Cummings