Andrew Garland sings In the Prison Pen

From the song cycle entitled 'Battle Pieces' by Paul Phillips
poems by Herman Melville
World premiere October 16, 2011
Pioneer Valley Symphony
Andrew Garland, baritone
Paul Phillips, conductor


Listless he eyes the palisades
And sentries in the glare;
'Tis barren as a pelican-beach
But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands
Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think—to recollect,
But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
Like those on Virgil's shore—
A wilderness of faces dim,
And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
He totters to his lair—
A den that sick hands dug in earth
Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
Walled in by throngs that press,
Till forth from the throngs they bear him dead—
Dead in his meagreness.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• opera
• song
• baritone
• Opera
• Song
• Melville
• Moby Dick
• orchestra
• Brown
• University

[grandmagrumpy]

I'm so glad I found these songs with you performing. Love your voice.