COMPOSER’S NOTES
These four poems were among those I considered when writing The White Election over twenty years ago. I had written what became the main music of “A Bird Came Down the Walk” in college days, in the spirit of Schubert or Schumann, but never whipped it into publishing shape. When Barbara Bonney kindly asked for a few songs to verse by an American poetess, I was grateful to be reminded of this unfinished business, along with the opportunity to suggest the oppressive cathedral tunes and the clip-clop of the hearse carriage in the second and last songs.
Set of four song settings of Emily Dickinson’s poems:
Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers
A Bird Came Down the Walk
There’s a Certain Slant of Light
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Gordon Getty discusses the song cycles Poor Peter and Four Dickinson Songs.