Music and Texts of GARY BACHLUND
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Small Homes - (1991)
Carl Sandburg
for medium voice and piano
The green bug sleeps in the white lily ear.
The red bug sleeps in the white magnolia.
Shiny wings, you are choosers of colors.
You have taken your summer bungalows wisely.[ 1 page, circa 35" ]
Carl Sandburg
This sweet, diminutive poem about diminutive creatures evokes a simple summer evening and called for a diminutive setting, a mere 23 measures long.
How long must a song be? This is all a matter of the text, and how succinctly one might capture the meaning and flavor of that text.
The utterly simple accompaniment features a gentle arpeggio of seconds under a simple melodic line in the form of any hymn tune of four phrases length. The harmonic structure is simple, a set of climbing fourths in succession, following which the song fades away as one set of diatonic seconds climbs to the highest range of the setting while another set of seconds sinks below, with a final little "wink."
The score for Small Homes 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.
