Tamer and Hawk (for mezzo-soprano and piano)
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SKU: A0.841261
Composed by Chris Gordon. 20th Century,Contemporary,Standards. Score and parts. 13 pages. Cool Wind Music Digital #3066865. Published by Cool Wind Music Digital (A0.841261).Tamer and Hawk is my unconscious 'homage' (see comments below) to English composer, Benjamin Britten, in his 'exotic' (i.e. wild, outlandish, outrageous) English folk song style. Whether that is noticeable or not, I will leave to the listener to decide. It could also be performed as a wild, outlandish, outrageous rock number as there is plenty of rage in the lyrics, lyrics which are spoken (or here, sung) by the hawk, and not by the tamer.
The song come from a set of 5 songs which together are called 'Nature Lyrics' as they are all about aspects of the natural world: a hawk, a snowdrop, trees in winter, a cricket or grasshopper, and a shadow traversing a lawn on a summer's day.
'Tamer and Hawk' is 'strophic' in form, with the poem divided into three verses. Gunn has divided his poem into four verses. Instead, I have combined verses 3 and 4 of the poem which makes for a more effective musical setting of Gunn's poem. The music is more or less the same for all three verses except for the last verse in which the text is repeated but uses two contrasting musical ideas both in the voice part and in the piano. Earlier in the song, tremolandi suggest the beating of the hawk's wing's and articulated syncopated, repeated D flats either in octaves or over a block chord progression represent the hawk hovering in the air, defying gravity. This chord progression acts as a 'cadence', or perhaps bridge passage would be a better description, between verses. There are also passages in thirds which represent the hawk's climbing and undulating flight, weaving back and forth across the sky.
The song has several distinct musical elements:
• Rising and falling semiquavers in the piano, often in contrary motion.
• Parallel semiquaver octaves in the piano which expand the voice's motif at bars 14-16 (pick up from last beat of bar 14) at the words 'and show that when I go, I go at your commands.'
• Parallel thirds in contrary motion which, together with another element, repeated syncopated D flats form the song's coda for piano.
As previously mentioned, I have attempted to set both voice and piano accompaniment in the late-English style of Benjamin Britten although the piano textures are not really Britten-like. They are not as dense and, although freely composed without a definite key (it does centre upon/around D flat, however), dissonance is not employed as much as in Britten's songs.
However, that is for others to judge. It wasn't a conscious decision to emulate Britten. It is just something that evolve or, rather, it is a similarity I noticed as I composed the song, so don't place too much importance on the comparison with Benjamin Britten's song style.
The piano accompaniment portrays the movements of the hawk, hovering, soaring, dipping, in an ecstatic display of its joy of being able to fly, and yet it knows it is not, and never can be, free. 'I am no longer free'; I am blind to other birds-the habit of your words has hooded me'. Here Gunn cleverly alludes to the hood placed over a hawk's head in order to calm it and also in order to confine the bird to the hawker's wrist. He (Gunn) also alludes, in this imagery, to the words which a bird is trained to obey so that, most importantly, it does not fly away. Even its prey is no longer his (or hers). Later in the poem, the hawk complains: 'You but half-civilize, To tame me in this way. Through having only eyes for you, I fear to lose, I lose to keep and chose (instead) tamer as prey.' The hawk knows it is not free but in a show of defiance, perhaps, or self-delusion, it pretends his keeper is his triumphant prey. Poor suffering bird! It can no longer feed itself and glide effortlessly throughout its own kingdom-the sky! It has to accept a new, constrained habitat upon the hawker's wrist.
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