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Eye Begins-Octavo-COVER-WEBThe Eye Begins to See is an 11-minute setting of Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time,” a poem in which Roethke uses dark, punishing, often unforgiving elements as metaphor for an anguished journey through the self that ultimately leads to inner peace. The two-movement work, scored for mixed chorus, piano and cello, is vivid in its text painting and imbued with drama, pathos, and ultimately, transcendent equanimity. The Eye Begins to See was commissioned by the Washington Master Chorale in the fall of 2012 and premiered in March 2013.

I.   In a dark time  (5:06)
II.  A steady storm of correspondences  (6:01)

IMPORTANT DIGITAL DOWNLOAD INFO: This choral score is available only as a digital download.  Please enter the number of copies you need to print for your choir in the “quantity” box on the right. (Once your transaction is complete, a link to a PDF of your score will be provided in a new browser window containing your receipt. After printing one copy of the downloaded score, please fill out the required information on page 2 of the score to validate your PDF Print License before printing copies for your choir.)

Voicing: SSAATTBB
Accompaniment: Piano and cello
Duration: 11 minutes
Text: Theodore Roethke "In a Dark Time," ©Random House, used by permission
Difficulty: Medium-Difficult

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The Eye Begins to See – Donald McCullough

The Eye Begins to See is an 11-minute setting of Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time,” a poem in which Roethke uses dark, punishing, often unforgiving elements as metaphor for an anguished journey through the self that ultimately leads to inner peace. The two-movement work, scored for mixed chorus, piano and cello, is vivid in its text painting and imbued with drama, pathos, and ultimately, transcendent equanimity.

I. (In a dark time)

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

In a Dark Time  by Theodore Roethke
From Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
©Random House, Used by permission

II. (A steady storm of correspondences)

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Download this Word document for your program notes: Eye Begins to See, The (Word 97-2003 Document)

For an analysis of the poem, try these sites:

In this confessional poem, Theodore Roethke describes a passage through a “dark time” in his life and his emergence from this episode, not into peace and quietude, but at least into wholeness. The journey to and out of the psychic pit described in the poem may be a metaphor for personal tragedy, spiritual emptiness, or, more likely, because it is known that Roethke suffered from periods of psychosis, a poetic attempt to deal with a mental breakdown.

The poet insists that a plunge to the bottom of the abyss <read more>

 

http://studies.tripod.com/ENGL2328/in_a_dark_time.htm

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