PROGRAM NOTE
Apprehensions was one of nine works commissioned by WFMT, Chicago’s Fine Arts Radio Station, as part of a series examining the 20th century art song.
It was my initial intention to group together a number of poems, when I came across Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath. Written in the last year of her life, it is the first poem in the Winter Trees collection. What immediately struck me upon reading it was what I perceived of as the musical suggestiveness of the poem’s central idea and formal plan: in four stanzas, the colors white, gray, red and black are used as a metaphor for the metamorphosis of a state of mind. Each stanza is rich with powerful imagery, ranging from the eerie to the intensely violent. More than an opportunity to paint color in sound—an attractive but, in and by itself, not exactly an original impulse—the poem’s format hinted at the possibility of great contrast between movements, held together and propelled forward by one central idea. The overall shape of a gradual ascent to a horrific climax culminating in a steep fall was one I found myself drawn to enormously, leading me to treat the work as a kind of a “mini-opera”, consisting of three “acts”, or movements, followed by an “aftermath”, or an epilogue. Toward that end I added a clarinet (to me an instrument which can be closely linked to the human voice) as a kind of “alter ego” to the more conventional pairing of voice and piano. My increased concern at the time of composing Apprehensions for the control of thematic transformation, coupled with contrapuntal thinking, allowed me a greater economy in the use of compositional materials and a new freedom of expression.
—Shulamit Ran
APPREHENSIONS
by Sylvia Plath
There is this white wall, above which the sky
creates itself—
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.
A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or birds in this world,
There is only a sourness.
This red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two grey, papery bags—
This is what I am made of, this, and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and a rain of pieties.
On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immortality among these!
Cold blanks approach us:
They move in a hurry.
From The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. Copyright 1971 by Ted Hughes. By permission of Harper and Row, publishers, Inc.
INFORMATION
Commissioned by WFMT as part of a 20th century Song Cycle commissioning series
First recorded for and broadcast by WFMT on June 20, 1979
Judith Nicosia, soprano
Laura Flax, clarinet
Alan Feinberg, piano
Duration: c. 20’
RECORDINGS
Judith Nicosia, soprano; Laura Flax, clarinet; Alan Feinberg, piano: Music of Shulamit Ran, made possible with support of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Composers Award Recording, Composers Recording Inc. (CRI), CD 609
Diane Ragains, soprano; Melvin Warner, clarinet; William Goldenberg, piano; Centaur Records, CRC 2590