Baby Toes - (2017)    

Carl Sandburg

baritone and piano

 

There is a blue star, Janet,
Fifteen years' ride from us,
If we ride a hundred miles an hour.

There is a white star, Janet,
Forty years' ride from us,
If we ride a hundred miles an hour.

Shall we ride
To the blue star
Or the white star?

2 pages, circa 1' 30"

 

The text is found in Sandburg's anthology, Smoke and Steel, 1920, in section V., "Mist Forms." Janet was the third of the Sandburg daughters, and this fancy is to that child as to all children. In Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories, created for his daughters -- Margaret, Janet and Helga -- one finds them through their nicknames, Spink, Skabootch and Swipes.

 

 

The diatonically poly-harmonic chords evoke fantasy, as the naive text asks "which" without anything other than the naive answer of a child.

 

 

For other song settings of Sandburg's texts, click here.

 

The score for Baby Toes is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.

 

Baby Toes