The Origins of The Orchard

The Orchard had its start many years ago.  I happened upon William Carlos Williams’ “Perfection” and decided to set it for a cappella mixed chorus.  The piece was read by the Gregg Smith Singers at one of their choral workshops that summer and then languished for some time.  Around 2008 I pulled it out and decided that it would be fun to build upon this piece by setting a number of Williams’ poems having to do with fruit. I took my time reading through his collected works and identified a number of poems that seemed suitable. 

Although “Perfection” was originally unaccompanied, when I sat down to work on the whole set, I knew right away that I wanted more musical color and variety than voices alone would achieve.  Overall, The Orchard is a piece of chamber music.  The piano - the only instrument present in all five movements - was my original choice of instrument, with flute and finally horn added in to achieve the balance and expression I was seeking.  The addition of the solo baritone did not come out of the chorus, but rather appeared as an outgrowth of the chamber music approach.  

To me, composing a collection of songs about fruit is humorous on its own, and while “Perfection” offers a funny though slightly askew take on the subject - as does the expressionistic “This Is Just To Say” - I wanted to tap into other emotional states as well.  “The Bare Tree” puts forth a cold and lonely landscape, while “Wild Orchard” tries to capture the excess and decay of late summer.  I have always loved Robert Schumann’s setting of Heinrich Heine’s “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai” and since Williams quotes Heine in his poem, I could not resist incorporating a bit of Schumann in my romantic take on “The Orchard”.   

Once I had my poetry assembled, it occurred to me that each poem seemed to reference a particular time of year.  I decided to order the songs according to the natural progression of the seasons. I spent a long time determining where to start and where to end, but I kept returning to the idea that if it wound up where it all began, I could possibly be approaching “Perfection” in my work.]