Two James Joyce Songs

set of two songs for low voice, piano | 6’

  1. Rain Has Fallen All the Day (3’)

  2. O’ Cool is the Valley Now (3’)

Perusal Score

Note

These two songs were comissioned for Katelyn Attieh as part of the James Joyce Art Song Project, a student-organized concert project at the University of Delaware consisting entirely of songs on the poetry of Irish modernist poet James Joyce. While most remembered for his contributions to literary modernism, Joycels poetry is quite lyrical and romantic with a distinctly melancholic color to it. It was these contrasting emotional colors which served as the conceptual fuel in my setting of these texts.

Text

Text by James Joyce

I. Rain Has Fallen All the Day

Rain has fallen all the day.
O come among the laden trees:
The leaves lie thick upon the way
Of memories.

Staying a little by the way
Of memories shall we depart.
Come, my beloved, where I may
Speak to your heart

II. O’ Cool is the Valley Now

O cool is the valley now
And there, love, will we go
For many a choir is singing now
Where Love did sometime go.
And hear you not the thrushes calling,
Calling us away?
O cool and pleasant is the valley
And there, love, will we stay.

XII. There Will Be Rest

There wiill be rest, and sure stars shining
Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,
A reign of rest, serene forgetting,
The music of stillness holy and low.

I will make this world of my devising
Out of a dream in my lonely mind,
I shall find the crystal of peace,—above me
Stars I shall find.

Photo:
James Joyce in 1915