Sappho Songs
4 Songs in translation by Renée Vivien - 2002

1.Tu m'oublies (You forget me)
2. Je serai toujours vierge (I will always be virgin)
3. Ondine
4. Roses du Soir (Roses of the Evening)

This short cycle was written in the Spring of 2002 and sets (relatively) more substantial poems by the enigmatic Sappho in French translations by (the if anything more enigmatic) Renée Vivien - an English woman, who "became French" and had a series of lesbian love affairs (one of which consciously aped that of Sappho on Lesbos itself) before dying tragically young.

The first song became the starting pont for my septet The Sadness of the King and the 'cello/piano duo On the blue shore of silence - a certain Attic bitterness, barely suppressing the pangs of longing for the absent "Atthis". The second song makes much use of tremolandi and suspends the voice in its high register. Ondine, the callous nymph who lures mariners to their doom, provides a nervous, scherzo-like interlude (also serving as the third movement of my oboe work Soaring), sharply contrasting with the final song which wallows in a sultry, saturated vision of "roses" on the sea. (Ideas from the second and fourth songs are recomposed in my 'cello/piano work On the blue shore of silence.)

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