Fever

kamerkoor a cappella
Fever werd geschreven in opdracht van de 3e Internationale Koorbiƫnnale Haarlem, voor het Nederlands Kamerkoor, met inanciƫle steun van het Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst. Het werk is opgedragen aan Neil Wallace.
Gepubliceerd door Donemus
image for Fever
Fever is gebaseerd op het gedicht The sick man van Wallace Stevens.

The sick man

Bands of black men seem to be drifting in the air,

in the south, bands of thousands of black men,

playing mouth-organs in the night or, now, guitars

 

Here in the North, late, late, there are voices of men,

voices in chorus, singing without words, remote and deep,

drifting choirs, long movements and turnings of sounds.

 

And in a bed in one room, alone, a listener

waits for the unison of the music of the drifting bands

and the dissolving chorals, waits for it and imagines

 

the words of winter in which these two will come together,

in the ceiling of the distant room, in which he lies,

The listener, listening to the shadows, seeing them,

 

choosing out of himself, out of everything within him,

speech for the quiet, good hail of himself, good hail, good hail,

the peaceful, blissfull words, well-tuned, well-sung, well-spoken.

 

From: the collected poems of Wallace Stevens. (publ. Alfred A. Knopf, New York)