The Garden Had Fallen Still

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SOFTCOVER

2021
chamber orchestra
19 minutes
​
82 pages (score)
312 pages (parts)
A time of quietness and reflection: 

Yeats' poem The Cap and Bells has always meant a great deal to me. I believe his descriptions contain wonderful truths about the subconscious.

A few nights before I was approached to discuss the commission of this work, I dreamed of writing a composition for various instruments placed in small groups and spread out in a beautiful garden.

I didn't remember any of the melodies, but felt certain that I would write a piece with "The Garden" somewhere in the title, which made me think of the Yeats poem.

The poem became a perfect fit with the ensemble's concept:

A new piece for a variety of musicians, spread out with social distancing in a large hall, during a time when our lives seem to have come to a halt: a time of quietness and reflection.

(March 2021 during the Corona Pandemic)​

The Cap and Bells
W.B.Yeats

The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill

It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;

But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.

He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.

'I have cap and bells,' he pondered,
'I will send them to her and die':
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.

She laid them upon her bosom,
under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.

She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.

They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.
Yeats wrote the following about the above poem:​

I dreamed this story exactly as I have written it, and dreamed another long dream after it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether I was to write it in prose or verse. The first dream was more a vision than a dream, for it was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the sense of illumination and exaltation that one gets from visions, while the second dream was confused and meaningless. The poem has always meant a great deal to me, though, as is the way with symbolic poems, it has not always meant quite the same thing. Blake would have said, 'The authors are in eternity,' and I am quite sure they can only be questioned in dreams.