Birds of Love and Prey (2014)

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Birds of Love and Prey: Bird cadenza

Birds of Love and Prey: The Tit and the Lovebird

Birds of Love and Prey: The Owl and the Nightingale

Birds of Love and Prey: The Turtle Dove

Deborah Sternberg, soprano; Andrew E. Simpson, piano, summer 2016

Program Notes

Birds of Love and Prey was composed for soprano Deborah Sternberg in 2014. The cycle, drawing on a range of textural sources from antiquity to the present, contrasts songbirds and predator birds – and explores the assumptions relative to each (e.g., songbirds are sweet, predators are nasty). In some cases, the types directly oppose each other (“The Owl and the Nightingale”); in others, they struggle with themselves (“The Tit and the Love-Bird”). There are solo portraits, as well. The whole is framed by choruses from Aristophanes’ Birds.

The piece appears on Naxos Records (released 2020): the title of the disc is also Birds of Love and Prey.

—Andrew Earle Simpson

Texts

Prologue: Bird cadenza

1. Aristophanes
O beloved nightingale,
Best loved of birds,
Sharer in all my songs.
Nightingale, my friend.
You’ve come, you’ve come, I’ve found you,
Bring your sweet voice to me,

O, as you chirp your lovely flute
With springtime voice,
Now begin our songs.

--from Aristophanes, Birds (trans. S. B. Ferrario)

2. The Tit and the Lovebird
A little tit and a rosy-faced lovebird 
Were a-sittin’ on the branches of a tree.
Now the tit moved over to the lovebird,
And he said, “Since you’re a little lovebird,
Won’t you give a little love to me?

Rosy said to the blue bird,
“You’re certainly a forward little tit!
There’s courage in your poor words,
But you got too much of it!
Move on down the branch, boy:
(So soon to get so cozy!)
Move on down the branch, boy:
And find yourself another Rosy!

“But I’m an honest bird,
Blue as the sky!
The tit persisted still,
“I’m an honest bird,
True to my kind,
But I’m lonely as a bird can be, Rosy!”

“I’m an honest bird,” said Rosy in reply,
“But that don’t mean I’m a fool!
“If you want some love from a lovebird 
Then you’d better go back to school, 
Boy, 
And learn this simple rule:

Lovebirds with lovebirds
Together will unite;
But lovebirds with no other birds:
For the rest we put to flight, blue boy,
- That’s right –
The rest we put to flight.
Good night!

--Anonymous

3. The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

4. Interlude
…Tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.
Thou wast not born for death, Immortal Bird!

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:

The same that oft[times] hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the
foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

--from John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

5. The Owl and the Nightingale
In a verdant valley,
I heard an owl and a nightingale dispute.
The nightingale started it.

She looked at the owl: looked her up and down, detested her.

And then she said:

You nasty creature!
You make me want to puke to look at you!
Your body is squat, your neck is scrawny, your eyes are black like lumps of coal.
Your face is so ugly, it stops my song in mid-…
You’re disgusting!
Better I should spit than sing about your screeching!”

The owl waited till dark, so ticked off she could hardly breathe, and then she said:
How does my song sound to you now?
If you were in my claws, you’d sing a different song!
You insult me all the time.
Why not fly out into the open and see which one of us is prettier?

No, you have very sharp claws.
Owl, dites-moi: Why do you do evil things?
You’re ruthless and bully small birds.
You fly by night and not by day,
And ev’ry evil creature loves the dark and hates the light.
That is why so many birds despise you, owl.”

The owl replied,
Well, you sing all night long,
And cheapen your song by singing so much.
But I sing in the evening at the proper time.

The nightingale answered,
You mean you screech and I sing!
Your song is lament, but mine is celebration!

The owl answered:
You’re good for nothing except warbling.
But I can catch mice in a barn, and in church in the dark.

The nightingale said,
No, it’s only when you’re shot that you turn useful,
because then your carcass is put on a stick,
and you become a scarecrow!

But I sing about love.  All my song is about it.
All love, of any kind, is good.”

--from anonymous 14th-century English poem, trans. E.N. Millett, freely adapted AES (ed. Lilla Kopar)

6. Bird Cadenza

7. The Turtle Dove
Your turtle-dove has flown away!
Ah, memory too sweet!
Vision too cruel!
Oh! On my knees,
I see him, I hear him!

Your turtle-dove has flown,
far, far from you;
But she is ever true
My beautiful love, my voice is calling;
All my heart is yours.

Precious flower, newly opened,
answer me!
You know if he loves me still,
If he is yet true!
My beautiful love, my voice is longing…
Ah! That your heart would turn to face me.

Your turtle-dove has flown,
Far, far from you.

--Jules Barbier, from Les Contes de Hoffmann (freely trans. AES)

8. Bird Cadenza

9. Aristophanes
Blest are the birds on the wing,
Who don no winter cloaks.
Summer’s shimmering beams
Do not melt us into misery.

But I make my home in the leaves,
In the vales of flowering meadows,
When cicadas, sweet and clear,
Gone mad for love of the sun,
Cry forth their sharp songs
In the noontime heat.

I pass my winters in canopied caves,
At play with the nymphs of the mountains.

And in springtime we feed on the myrtle,
Virgin white,
And the gardens of the Graces.

-from Aristophanes, Birds (trans. S. B. Ferrario)