I am writing in this book, Opus 88 (2011)
- 1. A gift of paper
- 2. Secret meetings
- 3. Language of women
- 4. I see the word ‘storm’
- 5. It is getting dark
I am writing in this book was composed in 2011 and was commissioned by Halcyon, who gave its first performance at the Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music on 18th September 2011. The work is about 17 minutes duration and is made up of settings of five songs in English on texts from the tenth century The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon adapted by the composer. The scoring of the work is for soprano, mezzo-soprano, cello, double bass, percussion, harp and piano and was written in close collaboration with Halcyon’s singers, Alison Morgan and Jenny Duck- Chong, with the assistance of an Artist Residency from the Bundanon Trust.
In developing the work I have been interested in some of the timeless ideas and contradictions in Shonagon’s famous Japanese text. Self-conscious female allure contrasted with powerlessness and anger, the malevolent and liberating force of language, and the sensual and material world sitting in contrast to the artist’s inner life. The Pillow Book consists of a diary of anecdotes, often quite quirky and poetic lists, and contemporary literary accounts written over a period of many years. The diary was written on paper given to Shonagon by the Empress in whose court she served. As a diarist, Shonagon seems to exemplify the artist’s continual paradox – wanting artistic privacy but working in a form that is inherently destined to be public. So it is not surprising that many have been drawn to her work over the centuries and seen in it a mirror for the contemporary world as well as a unique insight into feudal Japan.
My work charts Shonagon’s growth as a woman and a diarist from enthusiastic and naïve in the first song, through three songs that show her world and range of interests, to a final song steeped in the bitterness and dissolution of old age. The texts for the songs are in some cases overlapping combinations of different parts of the original.
© Andrew Schultz, 2011
Texts by Sei Shonagon adapted by Andrew Schultz
- 1. A gift of paper
Write in this book –
Things that I see
Things that I hear and know.
Lingering days
Holding this brush,
Never knowing others would see.
Endless pages.
Kept in my pillow
Safely from view.
Private, hidden.
He found the book
I fought, he took it.
My pages for no-one, only for me.
Fill every page.
Words that amuse,
Delight, distress.
They have no point.
Thoughts that offend,
Thoughts that exceed,
Are best to conceal.
But now they have been revealed.
Her gift to me.
- 2. Secret Meetings
Soft assignations in the summer.
Even though the night is cut short
By the sunlight spreading, before we have any sleep.
All the doors wide open – feel the breezes from the garden.
Hear on moonless nights the whispers moving through the garden.
Starlit nights delight me, and the lovely moon at daybreak,
Words can never catch the wonder of the dawn-lit moon.
In the seventh month the heat is painful.
Then in time there comes the parting.
Lovers try to end their talking,
Lovers try to finish all the small things that remain,
Chiding, teasing, laughing,
As the dawn grows brighter.
Noises, voices, heard from outside.
Startled, frightened by a loud cry from beyond the doorway,
For brief moments they feel certain that they have been seen, discovered.
Was it maybe just a bird, whose caw they heard, as it flew by?
Each note it sang was softer and more distant.
But on cold nights, echoes from the far-off bells can seem so strange –
They seem as if their sound comes from the deepest well.
Odd too, a crow’s first call, sounding so muted and faraway.
- 3. Language of women
Language of priests.
Language of men.
Common people add too many words when they talk.
Language of women.
River, deep river,
Mountain tombs,
Snakeberry,
Devil bush.
Burning fireball comets,
Heavy rusty iron,
Shibri-ar,
Demon vine.
Revolting things,
Squalid, horrid:
Inside a feline ear.
Baby mice who have no hair.
Unlined robes with open seams.
Darkness in a filthy place.
Ugly woman with a brood.
Lots of children.
Not just the word – the sound of thunder!
Dolts!
Billowing, luminous, ominous clouds!
Hail, snow, sleet!
White snivel is hideous in every way.
Rats nest.
Murderous monks.
Roasted, toasted, blasted cinders,
Bull spirit,
Claw hook grapnel.
- 4. I see the word ‘storm’
Yesterday:
a typhoon,
an autumn wind.
Great trees have gone,
huge branches torn,
lying there on earth.
Small leaves are stuck
in every space of lattice
and bamboo woven fence.
So intricate,
imagine this,
it was the storm that placed each there.
And now a sight, a woman
most exquisite, most dignified –
a purple robe with tawny cloth.
A sleepless night,
tossed by the wind,
her hair now hangs.
She kneels to see,
she gazes up,
all disarray she sees.
She wears brocade and gazes up:
“I now know why the word for ‘storm’
is written as the ‘mountain wind’.
So autumn’s trees bend and fall
with the force of this great wind
from the mountains.”
- 5. It is getting dark
I am old and barely live.
Nothing left of me but bones.
If to you who visit:
There were once great horses
‘She must be at home’
So fast
But I am not,
Their bones can still be bought.
Though here,
Will you buy my bones?
I ask myself if I am I.
Browse other notes
- After Figaro for e flat clarinet, opus 23
- After Nina for clarinet, cello and piano, opus 73
- As for bass clarinet and piano, opus 63b
- As wave drives wave, opus 115
- Ash Fire – Contrapunctus IX for chamber orchestra, opus 62
- Attack for solo viola, opus 23a
- August Offensive for orchestra, opus 92
- B-bouncing for three clarinets, opus 20
- Barcarole for solo piano, opus 45a
- Barren Grounds, opus 36
- Bassoon Concerto, opus 117
- Bayu for piano, opus 109
- Beach Burial for choir and orchestra, opus 78
- Black River, opus 37
- But God Cannot Be Known, for choir
- Calling Music (Contrafactum I) for orchestra, opus 39
- Chamber Suite from The Children’s Bach, opus 74b
- Chant – Tupukur ulute, opus 118
- Children’s Bach, opus 74
- Chorale, Demon, Beacon for bass koto and percussion, opus 51
- Christmas Song for French horn and piano, opus 65a
- Cloud Burning for winds, brass and percussion, opus 25
- Collide for bass clarinet and marimba, opus 42a
- Dark Chair, opus 47c
- Dark Well, opus 107
- Dead Songs for soprano, clarinet, cello, and piano, opus 45
- Deep blue and dirty for bassoon and piano, opus 87
- Descent of Mont Ventoux for string quartet, opus 107c
- Devil’s Music (Contrafactum II) for orchestra, opus 46
- Distant Shore, opus 44
- Ditties for voice and guitar, opus 17
- Diver’s Lament for orchestra, opus 52
- Dominion, opus 112
- Doppler Patrol, opus 111
- Duo Variations for viola and piano, opus 42
- Ekstasis for six solo voices, opus 43
- Elegy – The Moon Drowned for soprano, viola and piano, opus 102b
- Endling for orchestra, opus 72
- Ether Etude for sextet, opus 77
- Etudes Espace for organ, opus 30
- Everlasting Arms for clarinet and piano, opus 45b
- Falling Man/Dancing Man for organ and orchestra, opus 68
- Fast Talking: the last words of Dutch Schultz, opus 38
- Flock of Angels, opus 110a
- Four Inventions for piano, opus 74a
- Four Songs from Dead Songs, opus 45e
- From Fire Country for bass clarinet, opus 64c
- Garotte for orchestra, opus 10
- Going Into Shadows, opus 63
- Golden Dominion, opus 113
- Hamel Monash, opus 104b
- Harmonia belli, opus 104
- I am black for voice and piano, opus 63a
- Indigo Invention for violin and cello, opus 83a
- Interludes for piano, opus 100 no. 2
- Journey to Horseshoe Bend, opus 64
- Joyride
- L’Oiseau Fantastique I for clarinet, violin, cello, chamber organ and piano, opus 17
- L’Oiseau Fantastique II for string quartet and piano, opus 18
- Lake moonrise for mezzosoprano and ensemble, opus 94
- Larrakia Lament, opus 105
- Le Molière Imaginaire for eight voices, opus 99
- Lines drawn from silence for soprano and ensemble, opus 55a
- little tree for children’s choir and orchestra, opus 65
- Maali – Concerto for oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon with orchestra, opus 101
- Magnificat for choir, opus 79
- Master Mariner, opus 45
- Meaning of Water for seven harps, opus 69
- Mephisto for sextet, opus 41
- Mind, opus 106
- Moon and ocean for piano, opus 100 no.3
- Moon Drowned for soprano, tenor and piano, opus 102c
- Music is a gentle hammer
- Night Birds for solo clarinet, opus 86
- Night Flight for violin and piano, opus 41a
- Nocturnes and Variations, for piano, Opus 96
- Nunc dimittis for choir, opus 89
- O Oriensis, opus 24
- Once upon a time… for orchestra, opus 70
- One Sound – Quintet for flute and strings, opus 90
- Paradise for soprano, cello and piano, opus 95
- Peace for orchestra, opus 93
- Piano Concerto, opus 114
- Prelude and Postscript for piano, opus 100 no. 1
- Quicksilver Serenade for violin, viola, cello and double bass, opus 66
- Respiro/Simple Ground for flute and piano, opus 48
- Ring Out Wild Bells, opus 75
- River of silence, opus 110b
- Sea Call for brass trio, opus 35
- Sea-Change for piano, opus 32
- Septet no. 1, opus 16
- Septet No. 2 (Circle Ground), opus 52
- She dances by the river, opus 103
- Silk Canons for sextet, opus 47b
- Silk for two sopranos, opus 47
- Silken Weave for trumpet and piano, opus 47a
- Simplify, Simplify, for choir and ensemble, opus 82
- Sleepers Wake, Karalananga for piano, opus 64b
- Solace for chamber orchestra, opus 7
- Sonata for piano – Night Visions, opus 13
- Sonatina for harp, opus 108
- Sonatina for solo clarinet, opus 6
- Sonatina for solo violin, opus 66a
- Song of Songs for 18 voices, opus 67
- Sound Lur and Serpent for brass and percussion, opus 98
- Southern Cantata, opus 102
- Southern Ocean for choir and orchestra, opus 60
- Spherics for sextet, opus 21
- St Peter’s Suite for symphonic winds, opus 97
- Stick Dance 1 for clarinet, marimba and piano, opus 22a
- Stick Dance 2 for clarinet, viola and piano, opus 22b
- Stick Dance 3 for clarinet, violin and piano, opus 22c
- Stille Sprache for soprano, violin and piano, opus 81
- Study After Septet for bass clarinet, opus 16a
- Suspended Preludes for double bass and piano, opus 49
- Symphony No. 1 – In Tempore Stellae, opus 59
- Symphony No. 2 – Ghosts of Reason, opus 76
- Symphony No. 3 – Century, opus 91
- The Line for choir and orchestra, opus 116
- Three Architects for choir, opus 91a
- Three Pieces for Two Pianos, opus 1
- Three Songs from the Maritimes for choir
- To the Evening Star – five songs for soprano and piano, opus 80
- Tonic Continent for violin, cello and piano, opus 61
- Twelve Variations for piano duet, opus 57
- Two Pieces for piano, opus 100 no. 4
- Two Welsh Lullabies
- Violin Concerto, opus 55
- Violin Sonata, opus 84
- Wild Flower for six part choir, opus 71
- Willow Bend for orchestra, opus 50
- Wind Quintet, opus 85
- Winter Ground for solo vibraphone, opus 58