Hand, Frederic: Three Songs

"When I was part of a composers group at the School of Practical Philosophy in New York City, we were given an exercise in composition. The instructions were to read the text, allow it to have its effect, then compose without thought, bypassing any internal dialogue about the meaning of the words. The Poet’s Eye is from a speech in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, delivered by Theseus. It addresses the role of the poet in society and how the gift of imagination manifests through the poet’s pen. I Am is based on a poem of disputed origin, titled “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”. The poem has been attributed to Americans Mary Elizabeth Frye and Clare Harner, Stephen Cummings, a British soldier, J.T. Wiggins, an Englishman who migrated to America, and also attributed as a Navajo burial prayer. There Is a Splendor is a setting of a poem by Marsilio Ficino, an Italian scholar and Catholic priest, who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. " -F.H., composer