Empty Page (Song Two from 'Radiant Depth Unfolded')

Commissioned by SongFest and the Sorel Organization.

Poems: Rumi

First performed June 21, 2015 by Melanie Henley Heyn (soprano), Jesse Malgieri (baritone), Gloria Kim (piano) at Zipper Hall, the Colburn School, Los Angeles.

I am grateful for the opportunity to compose Radiant Depth Unfolded, for soprano, baritone, and piano, thanks to a commission awarded by SongFest and the Sorel Organization. The second song in the set of five, Empty Page, may be performed without baritone.

Faced with the initial challenge of selecting a poet, I eventually settled on Jalal al-Din Rumi. The next step was to identify several poems from the ocean of poetic forms and words that poured forth from the steady, mystical, lifelong discourse that Rumi held with a dervish learning community. My choices, snapshots from the vast emotional and spiritual territory explored by this master, include ecstatic, every day, and esoteric poems. The order of the five poems in this cycle was intended to reflect the fluidity of literary forms generated by Rumi throughout his long and luminous life.

The translator Coleman Barks writes, “Some resonance of ocean resides in everyone. Rumi’s poetry can be felt as a salt breeze from that, traveling inland.” Indeed, Rumi’s poems resonate across cultures, across centuries, and across all those isolating manmade divisions and boundaries, speaking in their own way to each of us and urging a recognition of our common humanity.