- While All the World Made Merry: 3 Poems by Charles Causley (1995) high voice, piano 9'
- Text from Charles Causley: Collected Poems 1951-1975 (David R. Godine)
- Commissioned by The Schubert Club.
- Premiere—1995, by Dorothy Maddison and Anne Nagell, Saint Paul, MN.
- Voice range:
- On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas
- Innocent's Song
- Sailor's Carol
Program Note
When Dorothy Maddison requested a set of songs exploring the darker side of Christmas, I was drawn to the work of Charles Causley. Causley was born in Cornwall, England in 1917, and began writing poems while serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. These three poems juxtapose images of war and innocence, themes appearing often in Causley's work, which is marked by a powerful simplicity of diction and rhythm in the ballad tradition. Causley's Collected Poems 1951-1975 was published in 1975.
Over a ground bass, the speaker of the first poem discovers a weary Jesus, worn-out by what has been made of him, encountering a band of merciless children. The obsessive, sardonic second song depicts a commercial, seductive Herod in ascendance, the dryness of his character suggested by a simple muting of the piano strings. The lulling final song suggests that meaning must be found, not in pre-packaged form, but in personal experience. Causley's war memories are ever-present, from the guns which close the first song to the persistent memory of lost comrades in the final elegy.