Music and Texts of GARY BACHLUND
Vocal Music | Piano | Organ | Chamber Music | Orchestral | Articles and Commentary | Poems and Stories | Miscellany | FAQs
Apple Pie Dream - (2009)
Eric Metaxas
for medium voice and piano
I brought an apple pie to bed
And set it down beside my head.
And when I fell asleep that night
The apples in the pie took flight....
This text is under copyright and not reproduced fully herein. For the text in its entirety please see: Apple Pie Dream
[ 3 pages, circa 1' 45" ]
Eric Metaxas
Best-selling author Eric Metaxas was born in New York City in 1963, grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale University. At Yale he served as editor of the Yale Record, the nation’s oldest college humor magazine. His work includes biographies, children’s books, and works of popular apologetics have been translated into Albanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, and Macedonian. The Hartford Courant has declared figuring him out “like trying to stick a pushpin in a cyclone.” His acclaimed biography, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery was published by HarperSanFrancisco, and is the “official companion book” to the feature film, also titled Amazing Grace. His biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer will be published by Thomas Nelson in April 2010.
The charm of this little tale in rhyme is in its form as well as storytelling. As absurd as it is to bring an apple pie to bed, it is also exactly the kind of fantasy the child so easily creates and understands. The form in successive couplets, which are reflected in the shape of this through-composed setting. The running eighth notes outline the tonic with its notes' half-step lower neighbors. Between each repetition of this gesture in various octave displacements is a set of varying gestures indicative of time passing by as the tale unfolds.
The eighth note gesture is replaced by simple falling triadic harmony in easy syncopation as the fantasy extends itself and rushes ahead to its conclusion. Throughout the dynamic remains a gentle and dreamy mezzo piano.
The score for Apple Pie Dream is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the poet and composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.
