A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky

In one month, Rebecca and I will perform Outgrabe for the second time.

But instead of practicing, I thought I'd set another poem to music.  (For record keeping purposes, A Boat was composed between Aug 26th and Sep 1st).  And now instead of practicing, I'm doing the very important job of writing this post.

CHAPTER 1: POETRY

Here are all of the poems from both collections:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Opening: All in the Golden Afternoon
Chapter II: How Doth the Little Crocodile
Chapter III: The Mouse’s Tale
Chapter V: You are Old, Father William
Chapter VI: The Duchess’ Lullaby
Chapter VII: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat
Chapter X: The Lobster Quadrille
Chapter X: ’Tis the Voice of the Lobster
Chapter X: Turtle Soup
Chapter XI: The Queen of Hearts
Chapter XII: The White Rabbit’s Evidence

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

Opening: Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow
Chapter I: Jabberwocky
Chapter IV: Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Chapter IV: The Walrus and the Carpenter
Chapter VI: Humpty Dumpty
Chapter VI: Humpty Dumpty’s Poem
Chapter VII: The Lion and The Unicorn
Chapter VIII: A-sitting On a Gate
Chapter IX: The Red Queen’s Lullaby
Chapter IX: To the Looking-Glass World
Chapter IX: The White Queen’s Riddle
After Chapter XII: A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky

The seven purple ones make up the collection Outgrabe.

The white one was written by Carroll with a popular tune (1830) in mind already.  I will never rewrite it, but last year I arranged the poem to the original sheet music, as readers of the time would have heard it.

The three blue ones sit outside the books, and unlike the others, they are not parodies.  They're the bookends.

The six in green are nursery rhymes.  The tune for Twinkle Twinkle has been around since the mid 1700's, which is before the original poem Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (let alone Carroll's reference) was even written.  The tune for Hush-a-by Baby, as we know it in the US, was written in 1887, which is 16 years after Through The Looking-Glass was written, which means it could lend itself to a re-writing.  I will address these nursery rhymes, probably including Twinkle Twinkle, all at once some day, and that set of nursery rhymes goes like this:

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea-tray in the sky.

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer day:

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

And took them quite away!

‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Agreed to have a battle;

For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,

As black as a tar-barrel;

Which frightened both the heroes so,

They quite forgot their quarrel.’

‘The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown:

The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town.

Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town.’

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.

Hush-a-by lady, in Alice’s lap!

Till the feast’s ready, we’ve time for a nap:

When the feast’s over, we’ll go to the ball —

Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and all!

That will leave the six in pink, along with the nursery rhymes, to form a second collection of seven songs written in 1-7 sharps.  As Outgrabe is written in 1-7 flats, and my three blue bookends will be composed with no sharps and no flats, it will become quite the well-tempered collection.  (If you didn't just blow a kiss to Bach, kindly take a moment to do so now.)

This year, I chose my favorite of the blues, A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky.

It is an acrostic poem, and the first letter of each line spells "Alice Pleasance Liddell."

A boat beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —

Lingering in the golden gleam —

Life, what is it but a dream?

CHAPTER 2: COMPOSITION NOTES

(Score Link: A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky)
Because this is the last poem of the entire book, this song is written to be an epilogue of Outgrabe, evoking memories and dreams.

Memories are never perfect, so I wanted to include some of the most memorable moments without looking them up or thinking very much about it.  In other words, I purposely tried to compose this with a little more instinct and a little less calculation than usual, but who knows if I really did.  I knew I had to pay homage to the origin of this entire project, Jabberwocky.  I knew I wanted to include Queen Alice.  Other than that, the poetry is rather melodic, which brings both Crocodile and Turtle to mind.  So the William Byrd and the tarantella were cast aside.  And although there's no specific quote from the Walrus, the general harmonic ideas of clashing and bitonality, as well as quoting a popular (Disney) tune, can all be found in that ridiculously long-winded song.

Jabberwocky fits the fourth verse (section C) best due to the lead-in of "slain" and the diamond of a word "phantomwise."  That entire verse is a direct quote from the song, and it's not even transposed.  The rhythm has been stretched to 4/4 instead of its original 3/4, which gives off a suspended-in-time sort of feeling, like when you see a teacup falling to the floor, ever so slowly, and yet you can't catch it.  This suspension in time happens right before the slaying of the Jabberwock, which occurs more dramatically in the original, and is here referenced in the left hand crossover in measure 36.  (All of this means that I was saying teacup to be polite, and it was really the neck of my beloved Jabberwocky our gazes have been transfixed upon.)

The very opening of A Boat - a dissonant chord setting the stage for the vocal entrance - comes directly from Jabberwocky.  (Rebecca very sweetly pointed out that it's harder to find the opening pitch this time.  Luckily for me, she is more than capable of finding it.)  But speaking of all of this, I did quote the original dissonance, which is the juxtaposition of the Neapolitan against the tonic.

Before I show you how, I have to bring up Chris' glockenspiel part.  He plays every note of Sammy Fain's "Alice in Wonderland" in its original key of G major, written for the 1951 Disney Film.  It's a charming piece which is not only traditionally harmonized, but also of the popular form AABA.  More on Chris' part in a bit.  Fain's A section avoids f's of any kind (which means there aren't f#'s), so that entire section remains diatonic to my setting in C.  The B section and the bridge leading to it, however, have a few f#'s and c#s.  I took advantage of that to help ease the piano part into an F# major chord over an F outline as illustrated below:

Jabberwocky (Neapolitan in the right hand)

A Boat (Chris helping me get there in the glockenspiel)

That's really all I wanted to say about Jabberwocky, so let's take a look at the other references.

The accompaniment pattern in the B sections is a variation on the bridge in m. 38-40 of Turtle Soup, and the glockenspiel quotes the opening theme of Turtle in m. 12-14 and 38-40.  Large vocal leaps are just something I like, and they're present in both Alice and Turtle.  The interval is from Alice, but the idea of ending a phrase in a dramatic descending plummet is from Turtle.  (Again, this set is written for Rebecca's voice, and she has proven herself so capable that I need not behave.)

Queen Alice is first referenced by the descending 9ths I just mentioned, which are arranged in an ascending sequence of three in Chris' glockenspiel part.  We later find out that this was a truncated version of an ascending sequence of nine descending 9ths, which appear at the end of the second B section.  In the original, there are three descending thirds followed by nine descending 9ths to represent the lyrics "30 times 3" and "90 times 9."

Crocodile is referenced with the double harmonic minor scale in m. 35-36 and the coinciding glockenspiel part.  Short and sweet.

Circling back to Chris' glockenspiel part, I'd like to chat a little bit about the overall concept of this song.  Rebecca mentioned that Chris' part is like "a little voice that's like a little dream," and I couldn't have described my intention more accurately.  Because the Sammy Fain tune is so famous, and played in a clear and projecting bell tone over the slight muddiness that I tend to write into piano parts, it is my hope to force my audience into the uncomfortable task of hearing two keys at once.  Due to the overall absence of f#'s, however, it's rather easygoing as far as bitonality goes.  The Fain coexists in a parallel universe, sort of being consonant and accidentally diatonic, and sort of holding it's G majorness all on its own.

I actually wrote my opening phrase without realizing its similarity to the first phrase of this song, and once I did, I just superimposed the Fain and paid the combination my best attempt at half-hearted attentions.  For example, I wanted to write the e-flat at the end of Rebecca's first phrase, and then when I saw that the Fain ended on a d-natural at that moment, I was just like, "cool."

The thing about music in general is that there are no physical bounds, which makes it a playground for imagination.  Debussy can pull Sunken Cathedrals out of the water, Ravel can introduce us to a Water Nymph, and Berlioz can make us poison ourselves with opium from heartache.  And if they can do all of that, then we can most certainly go through a Looking-Glass and step into Wonderland.  All we have to do is enter the key of G major and write our stuff off of Fain's harmonies for a moment.  And suddenly, we're in one tonality, which means the universes have converged.  Rebecca's line remains true to our universe's style, but we're finally paying more than half hearted attentions to Chris and the Wonderland he lives in.  So that was easy - for the D section, I just wrote a duet.

It was at this point that I ran into my first and only compositional puzzle in this song: we had just firmly established G major with functional harmonies, and now we had but 3 short lines to cadence, rather inevitably, into C major (without the help of authentic cadences, which are currently being withheld for Wonderland and Wonderland alone).  Having a massive C pedal was a start, but I needed more.  I needed help from the vocal line, and Rebecca's triplets with two f-naturals in m. 59 is that turn - the solution.  She noticed this right away, and longed for our familiar (yet strange) minor-major 7th, but I'm certain that she'll make it sound entirely effortless, and the audience will not hear this as the secretly violent pivot that sends us down the path to C major.  In fact, I trust that they won't even notice the fork in the road.

Speaking of tonal plans, it's not important, but I'll just mention that the sections cadence thusly:

    A1 - in C

    B1 - in C

    A2 - in F

    C - in A

    B2 - in C

    D - in G

    A3 - in C

Anyway, if section C is a Jabberwocky quote and D is a merging of universes, I'll give you a quick word on the A's and B's, and that will be all there is left to say about this little song.

The verses are short, so I never have time to do very much.

The B sections are about the "children three," so they're sequences starting with triplets.  They end with Rebecca's descending ninth, which opens the door for Chris' descending ninth sequences.  The two B sections are nearly identical, with some slight piano alterations.

In the A sections, I establish the minor-major 7th (C-E♭-G-B), which is home in our universe, do something else, and then cadence.  In the first A, Rebecca floats down to a g# on "dreamily" because if you're doing something dreamily, you're not really paying attention, and a #5 is a nice place to settle.  That's where I imagined a feather floating down and landing onto my tea table.  Yes, of course there's a #5 on my tea table.

In the second A section, "Echoes fade and memories die" called for its own little sequence of echoes and distortion.  And in that distortion, instead of a #5, we encounter a ♭5.  And you already know all about the last A section, where the weirdest thing I do is simply stay in the key.

Yours,