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What I Mean Is – (2009)
for Soprano and String Trio
Text by David Bartone
Approximately 12 minutes
View the score (Acrobat Reader required)

What I Mean Is – will premiere with Ensemble Green and soprano Ann Noriel on Saturday, May 8, 2010, at 8pm. The performance will be at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music.

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There isn’t a single narrative for this cycle. The texts all suggest to me personal relationships under different kinds of stress. Not so much fighting as working out difficult issues. Explaining themselves.

The string trio instrumentation is certainly not usual for a song cycle. I wanted the opportunity to vary the accompaniment, allowing for movements that do not include all the instrumentalists. I believe the trio suits this piece because, more than a string quartet, a string trio is an ensemble of equals.

<< T E X T S >>

Original Poems by David Bartone

Movement 1.
Haiku

Complacency:
the driftwood snipped free.
Yes in plain sight.

Movement 2.
What I Mean Is—

       Your old walls made to shiver. The car that drives by in the rain, how when it streaks the long slow puddle out front it is ripping a sheet of paper. How long ought I let you by yourself, knowing the tears mean we grieve too slow and we grieve too fast?

       There are nooks of the situation—“What awful work preening must be!”

       There is so much loss in the waves when they land. There is an arc in every thing. The time of year is always excruciating—we can’t stop now. What I mean is—if you ask the answer is yes. You know that.

Movement 4.
Haiku

In anger
the ivy lassoes itself.
I prove myself to no one.

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