Programme Note

A Crown for Sonia is a set of two songs for voice, cello and piano.

The title piece came from a collaboration with Seth Michelson, whose bilingual heroic crown of sonnets about the genocide in Argentina (1976-1983), “A Crown for Sonia,” was set to original music. The piece won first prize at the 2009 ASCAP and Lotte Lehmann Foundation Art Songs Competition. 

Come Walk With Me, and I will Tell is based on selections from The Song of the Stone Wall by Hellen Keller

TEXT

A Crown for Sonia
Seth Michelson

My wife’s family fled Argentina

a tiros de bala, los milicos

firing shots at them, bullets sizzling

past their ears. Así the family, five in all,

two parents con sus pibes, ran in tears,

death be not proud, my wife was nine, her

siblings littler. Behind, they left a dog, ferns

unwatered, plates in the sink, stuffed animals

forever silent on children’s beds, forever.

Here now, my wife’s mother, una brava

científica, teaches cowgirls to swap

shotguns for lives in cancer research,

y mi suegro, a scientist, too, plays Bach on piano,

explaining, note by note, Yo no fui un desaparecido.

Glossary

así: “like this”

brava: “brave”, “strong”, “fierce”

científica: “scientist”

desaparecido: “disappeared”; used as a verb, the word refers to the process by which the military forcibly “disappeared” people during the genocide in Argentina (1976-1983); used as a noun, the word refers to the people who disappeared during that time, most likely after being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by members of the Argentine military; the symbolic figure for the number of desaparecidos (“disappeared” people) in Argentina during the genocide is 30,000; in the poem, the line “Yo no fui un desaparecido” is a claim of defiance against the fascists meaning “I wasn’t disappeared” or “They didn’t manage to disappear me!”

milicos: a common term of derision for members of the Argentine military during the genocide; the vehemence of the derision depends upon the context and inflection of the noun in its delivery.

pibes: “children”, “kids”, the term is a colloquial, tender, and somewhat dated Argentine word, and here “con sus pibes” roughly means “with their kids” or “with their children”

suegro: “father-in-law”

tiros de bala: “gunshots”

—

Come Walk with Me, and I Will Tell
Hellen Keller

Come walk with me, and I will tell

What I have read in this scroll of stone;

I will spell out this writing on hill and meadow.

It is a chronicle wrought by praying workmen,

The forefathers of our nation–

Leagues upon leagues of sealed history awaiting an interpreter.

This is New England’s tapestry of stone

Alive with memories that throb and quiver

At the core of the ages

As the prophecies of old at the heart of God’s Word.

The walls have many things to tell me,

And the days are long. I come and listen:

My hand is upon the stones, and the tale I fain would hear

Is of the men who built the walls,

And of the God who made the stones and the workers.