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Found Frozen: Songs of Jeffrey Ryan
Danika Lorèn, soprano Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano Dion Mazerolle, baritone
Steven Philcox, piano
The Canadian Art Song Project is proud to announce the upcoming release of FOUND FROZEN: SONGS OF JEFFREY RYAN. The new recording features premiere commercial recordings of composer Jeffrey Ryan’s Of Passion’s Tide (1991), Found Frozen (1997), and Miss Carr in Seven Scenes (2017), commissioned by CASP.
Canadian Art Song Project brings together four of Canada’s outstanding interpreters of art song for selections that span over two decades of music for solo voice and piano by composer Jeffrey Ryan. These premiere recordings celebrate vivid storytelling in words and music, through themes of maturation, perseverance and love.
Pianist Steven Philcox, baritone Dion Mazerolle, soprano Danika Lorèn, and mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó offer powerful and intimate readings of the cycles Of Passion’s Tide (1991), Found Frozen (1997), and Miss Carr in Seven Scenes (2017), ending with the beautiful stand-alone piece So Crumble Into Sand (2014). Presented in one recording, these works move from some of the composer’s earliest and most often performed works, to a composition commissioned for the specific talents of Szabó and Philcox and written at a time when Ryan is recognized as one of the most skilled Canadian composers for the voice.
FOUND FROZEN is the sixth commercial release Canadian Art Song Project has produced in their series of recordings highlighting the wealth of song by Canadian composers.
POEMS / POÈMES
FOUND FROZEN
1. Found Frozen
She died, as many travellers have died,
O’ertaken on an Alpine road by night;
Numbed and bewildered by the falling snow,
Striving, in spite of failing pulse, and limbs
Which faltered and grew feeble at each step,
To toil up the icy steep, and bear
Patient and faithful to the last, the load
Which, in the sunny morn, seemed light!
And yet
’T was in the place she called her home, she died;
And they who loved her with the all of love
Their wintry natures had to give, stood by
And wept some tears, and wrote above her grave
Some common record which they thought was true;
But I, who loved her last, and best, — I knew.
2. Poppies on the Wheat
Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.
The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn’s gain,
But I,—I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.
3. Her Eyes
That they are brown, no man will dare to say
He knows. And yet I think that no man’s look
Ever those depths of light and shade forsook,
Until their gentle pain warned him away.
Of all sweet things I know but one which may
Be likened to her eyes.
When, in deep nook
Of some green field, the water of a brook
Makes lingering, whirling eddy in its way,
Round soft drowned leaves; and in a flash of sun
They turn to gold, until the ripples run
Now brown, now yellow, changing as by some
Swift spell.
I know not with what body come
The saints. But this I know, my Paradise
Will mean the resurrection of her eyes.
—
poems by Helen Hunt Jackson
***
MISS CARR IN SEVEN SCENES
Oh, These Mountains!
Oh, these mountains! They won’t bulk up.
Something has spoken to the very soul of me,
wonderful, mighty, not of this world. Chords way
down in my being have been touched. Dumb notes
have struck chords of wonderful tone. Something
has called out of somewhere. Something in me is
trying to answer. It is surging through my whole
being, the wonder of it all, like a great river rushing
on, dark and turbulent, and rushing and irresistible,
carrying me away. Where, where? I long to hear and
yet I’m half afraid.
Oh, you mountains, I am at your feet—humble,
pleading! Speak to me in your wordless words!
A Glimpse of God
Emily Carr, born Dec. 13, 1871 at Victoria, B.C.,
4 a.m. in a deep snow storm, tomorrow will be sixtytwo.
It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening.
Do not forget life, artist. A picture is not a collection
of portrayed objects nor is it a certain effect of
light and shade nor is it a souvenir of a place nor a
sentimental reminder, nor is it a show of colour nor a
magnificence of form, nor yet is it anything seeable
or sayable. It is a glimpse of God interpreted by the
soul.
A few minutes more and the New Year will come.
The present moment, that’s all we have. This looking
forward and looking back is unprofitable. I have
done? I will do? No, I AM DOING.
Rhythm and Space
Rhythm and space, space and rhythm, how can I
learn more about these?
I woke with this idea. Try using positive and negative
colours in juxtaposition. Try working in complementaries;
run some reds into your greens, some
yellow into your purples. Red-green, blue-orange,
yellow-purple.
The arrangement, the design, colour, shape, depth,
light, space, mood, movement, balance, not one or
all of these fills the bill. There is something additional,
a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a
heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the
oneness of all things.
Form is fine, and colour and design and subject
matter but that which does not speak to the heart is
worthless.
Oh, that mountain! I’m dead beat tonight with
struggling.
Letters
Reams of Horrid Letters
I’ve written reams of horrid letters to picture galleries
that won’t return my exhibits. National Gallery
had three for three years, Toronto Watercolour had
three for two years. Why should one have to beg
and beg to get their own belongings? I wrote Brown
straight from the shoulder. He’ll ignore it like always,
as if I did not exist, weren’t worth a glance even from
his eye.
Letters
Mr. Hatch Wrote
Mr. Hatch wrote acknowledging the two paper
sketches I sent him. He found their vigour and
profoundness appealing. Said few people understand
them. Now I can’t see what there is to be understood.
Perhaps folk would like a numbered bit on the
back:
1. a tree,
2. a root,
3. a grass,
4. a fool looking.
Letters
Compliments, Hanna Lund
Yesterday I got this letter.
Dear Madame Emily Carr:
Just a few words to express my great admiration for
your beautiful picture, “Peace.” To me this picture
represents Divinity and I have often been sitting in
front of it this last week.
Compliments,
Hanna Lund
When I read it I cried hard.
A Movement Floating Up
I am sixty-three tomorrow and have not yet known
real success.
I am painting a sky. The subject is sky, starting lavender
beneath the trees and rising into a smoother
hollow air space, greenish in tone, merging into laced
clouds and then into deep, bottomless blue, not
flat and smooth like the centre part of the sky, but
loose, coming forward. There is to be one sweeping
movement through the whole air, an ascending
movement, high and fathomless. The movement
must connect with each part, taking great care with
the articulation. A movement floating up. It is a
study in movement, designed movement.
A movement floating up.
I’m Just Whizzy!
I’m just whizzy! Sold four pictures.
Received $120 for picture “Shoreline.” Gallery took
$30 commission from $150 sale price to Mrs. de
Pencier. Also got $75 for three sketches from Miss
de Pencier. What a help to finances!
Mr. Band has bought “Nirvana” for $200, Mr.
Southam “Haida Village” for $150, and Lawren Harris
another for $200. A number of others are over
in the East being sat on and considered.
Toronto Art Gallery has purchased “Western
Forest,” “Movement in the Woods” and “Kispiax
Village” for $1,075. I was stunned when I opened the
letter. It is wonderful.
Ottawa has bought two canvases, a paper sketch,
“Blunden Harbour,” a Haida village and “Sky” for
$750. Madame Stokowski, wife of the composer
and conductor, bought a small canvas for $75. Mr.
Southam
bought a small Skidigate sketch in oils for $150
and Mrs. Douglas a French cottage for $15. An old
Vancouver pupil took a Pemberton sketch, also for
$15. How lucky
I am, or rather, how well taken care of!
15
15
150
75
750
$1005 Goodness!
Uncovered
Perhaps what brought it home was the last two lines
of a crit in a Toronto paper: “Miss Carr is essentially
Canadian, not by reason of her subject matter
alone, but by her approach to it.” I am glad of that.
I am also glad that I am showing these men that
women can hold up their end. So I have decided to
stop squirming, to throw any honour in with Canada
and women. It is wonderful to feel the grandness of
Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but
because she’s something sublime that you were born
into, some great rugged power that you are a part
of.
I have uncovered “The Mountain.”
I think that one’s art is a growth inside one. I do not
think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle.
One does not keep digging up a plant to see how
it grew. Who could explain its blossom? It can only
explain itself in smell and colour and form. It touches
you with these and the thing is said. These critics
with their rules and words and theories and influences
make me very tired. It is listening; it is hunting
with the heart. How can one explain these things?
—
texts by Emily Carr, selected and adapted by Jeffrey Ryan
***
OF PASSION’S TIDE
Desires
Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet—
that is how desires look that have passed
without fulfillment; without one of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.
The Next Table
He must be scarcely twenty-two years old.
And yet I am certain that nearly as many
years ago, I enjoyed the very same body.
It isn’t at all infatuation of love.
I entered the casino only a little while ago;
I didn’t even have time to drink much.
I have enjoyed the same body.
If I can’t recall where—one lapse of memory means nothing.
Ah see, now that he is sitting down at the next table
I know every movement he makes—and beneath his clothes,
once more I see the beloved bare limbs.
At the Theater
I was bored looking at the stage,
and I lifted my eyes to the loges
and I saw you in a loge
with your strange beauty, your dissolute youth.
And at once there came back to my mind
all they had told me about you in the afternoon,
and my mind and body were moved.
And while fascinated I gazed
at your tired beauty, your tired youth,
your tastefully selected clothes,
I imagined you and depicted you,
the way they spoke to me of you that afternoon.
Picture of a 23-year-old youth painted by his friend of the same age,
an amateur
He finished the painting yesterday noon. Now
he studies it in detail He has painted him in a
gray unbuttoned coat, a deep gray; without
any vest or any tie. With a rose-colored shirt;
open at the collar, so something might be seen
also of the beauty of his chest, of his neck.
The right temple is almost entirely
covered by his hair, his beautiful hair
(parted in the manner he prefers it this year).
There is the completely voluptuous tone
he wanted to put into it when he was doing the eyes,
when he was doing the lips… His mouth, the lips
that are made for consummation, for choice love-making.
Before Time Changes Them
They were both deeply grieved at their separation.
They did not desire it; it was circumstances.
The needs of a living obliged one of them
to go to a distant place— New York or Canada.
Their love certainly was not what it had been before;
for the attraction had gradually waned,
for love’s attraction had considerably waned.
But they did not desire to be separated.
It was circumstances.— Or perhaps Destiny
had appeared as an artist separating them now
before their feeling should fade, before Time had changed them;
so each for the other will remain forever as he had been,
a handsome young man of twenty-four years.
Return
Return often and take me,
beloved sensation, return and take me—
when the memory of the body awakens,
and old desire again runs through the blood;
when the lips and the skin remember,
and the hands feel as if they touch again.
Return often and take me at night,
when the lips and the skin remember…
—
poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven
***
SO CRUMBLE INTO SAND
I let my love harden like concrete
But I’m still so incomplete
Don’t be so quick to harden like me
There are cracks you do not see
So crumble into sand
Sink into my being
You’re all that I am
I am yang and you are my instinct to love
Won’t you let our hearts beat in sync to love?
—
poem by Mustafa Ahmed
