Songs of Love and War

1991

16 minutes

Soprano, piano, violin, oboe, bassoon, and percussion

Walt Whitman, Jozef Wittlin, Emily Dickinson, and the Old Testament

Stephen Walt, in memory of his father.

August 14, 1991, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Marlene Walt, soprano, Jeannnie Shames, violin, Ralph Gomberg, oboe, Stephen Walt, bassoon, Thomas Gayger, percussion, Gilbert Kalish, piano

Available on demo CD

1. Look Down Fair Moon (Walt Whitman)
2. Stabat Mater (Jozef Wittlin, translated by Joy Davidman))
3. The Song of Songs (Old Testament)
4. My Triumph lasted till the drums (Emily Dickinson)
5. Reconciliation (Walt Whitman)

Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater
Jozef Wittlin, translated by Joy Davidman

The grieving mother stood on the square -
Her dead son was hanging there.

In the frightful world the mother stood,
A servant’s kerchief on her head.

She shed no tears, she uttered no cries,
Watched the cold corpse with stone-cold eyes.

Bare-foot he dangled in the air,
They had taken his shoes before hanging him there.

The Nazis march in her son’s shoes
On the earth which they misuse.

Earth like the mother, in agony,
which, like her, waits silently.

Stabat Mater dolorosa,
Her sons were cut from the gallows tree.

She took them up, she buried her children -
In a grave as silent as she.

Stabat Mater, Poland our mother,
With her crown of thorns, by the gallows tree.