For Low Voice and Piano

Duration: 3’

First Performances: 12 December 2017 / Jorell Williams, voice; Mila Henry, piano / The Phoenix Concerts, Chirch of St. Matthew and St. Timothy, New York, NY

Dedication: “Commissioned by the Steven Gerber Foundation for the Phoenix Concerts, 2017.”

Text: William Butler Yeats (E)

Recording: Naxos 8.559949 (spring 2025 release)

Publisher: Peermusic Classical

Program Note:

Commissioned by the Steven Gerber Foundation in 2017 for premiere on the Phoenix Concerts in New York City, this musical dramatic monologue treatment of Yeats’ 1918 poem mirrors with two distinctly different musical gestures Yeats’ juxtaposition of the airman’s existential ennui and and his struggle for identity as an Irishman fighting a war that was not his own. Premiered by Jorell Williams and Thomas Bagwell, the song has been recorded by Shavon Lloyd and Amir Farid for the Naxos label (8.559949).

I have set this poem twice. The second version may be found in the 2019 song cycle The Art of Song for male voice singing the words of Yeats and a trio of three women interpolating Stephen Crane’s 1899 poem “War is Kind.”