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 first and last were recomposed and expanded as the 'cello/piano duo On the blue shore of silence. The third became a movement of my oboe and piano work Soaring

The cycle opens with a cry of "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, sharply contrasting with the final song which wallows in a sultry, saturated vision of "roses" on the sea. Unfortunately this cycle has never been performed.

PLEASE READ: THIS IS NOT A PUBLIC DOMAIN WORK. ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED.PRINTED COPIES ARE FOR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY 

SCORE (in a volume of my four "early" song cycles)

If you have arrived at this page from a search engine (e.g. Google) and cannot see the menu system, please click here.