A Poet To His Beloved for tenor, flute, string quartet and piano Op.40 (1993) c.15'00"
poems by William Butler Yeats

I. A Poet To His Beloved
II. He Remembers Forgotten Beauty
III. He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge
IV. He Thinks Of His Past Greatness When A Part Of The Constellations Of Heaven
V. He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead
VI. He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Commissioned by Susan and Elihu Rose

Dedicated to Robert White

First performed on February 17th, 1993 at Alice Tully Hall in NYC by Robert White, tenor; James Galway, flute; Brian Zeger, piano; and the Lark Quartet 

ABOUT

This work was commissioned by Susan and Elihu Rose.  It was written at the request of tenor Robert White, to whom it is dedicated.  It was premiered at Alice Tully Hall on February 17th, 1993 by Robert White, James Galway, the Lark Quartet and pianist Brian Zeger.  It was actually Miss Alice Tully's suggestion that some settings of Yeats would be "lovely" that prompted me to look at these poems.  I was at once struck by their intense lyric beauty and decided immediately to use them for this work.  The six poems were chosen from Yeats' 1899 collection "The Wind Among The Reeds."  Dealing with unrequited love, these particular poems have hints of the mystic preoccupations which were to become more prominent in Yeats' later work.

Scored for an ensemble consisting of Flute, Piano and String Quartet, it was my intention that the beauty and clarity of the poetry should be matched by a directness of musical expression which would not overwhelm the poems.  The instrumental writing makes no attempt at "tone painting" but rather provides a colorful but often austere psychological background to the tenor's melodies which are at times almost folk-like in their simplicity.

The work is unified as a cycle not only by its tonal structure, but also through harmonic and motivic elements which the individual songs share.

RECORDINGS

REVIEWS

“The centerpiece was Lowell Liebermann’s “A Poet to His Beloved”…Radiant, resonant sonorities are the most striking aspect of this piece. Liebermann has a clever way of couching harmonies in ostinatos and distributing them widely across the ranges of the instruments to make the rhythms interlock and glow. The color of that chordal glow is often unpredictable; dissonant chords often resolve to unexpected voicings or spellings, especially at the end of phrases…The flute lines…imitate the voice and trail behind it like a wake or waft about it like curls of perfumed cigarette smoke.”
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“The best of the song cycles presented Sunday is a collection of six poems by Yeats set to music by Lowell Liebermann, titled “A Poet to His Beloved.” Colorfully orchestrated for flute, piano and string quartet, Liebermann’s work carefully mirrors Yeats’ vivid verbal imagery through tonal sonorities of the instruments, while his expressive writing captures the pervasive solemnity that permeates the poems.”
Syracuse Herald-Journal