Desire

Samuel Taylor-Coleridge wrote a poem that is only four lines long, but has had an extremely profound impact on my life. In Desire, Coleridge compares true love to flames, that swell up. He says that these feelings are natural, our "earthly frame". He also says that it is the truest reflection of our intentions and our emotions, the "language of the heart". I've known and studied this poem for several years, since my high school days. The poem is so short, likely one of the shortest collection of words that has been published as a serious work of art. But nevertheless, the meaning is incredibly powerful. I originally put this poem along with a collection of poems that I was setting to try to piece together a story of heartbreak in high school. This project never came to fruition, however the way I set this text stayed with me. A few years later I decided to take some of my older sketches and try to piece together something that I felt portrayed the complexity and the raw emotional content of the poem. There are a lot of close intervals within musical lines; reminiscent of Whitacre choral writing techniques. This is done for multiple reasons, the primary one being to highlight a very deep aspect of this poem, something that it is named after: Desire. When we feel desire, it boils up inside of us like flames do, and one way to musically portray this is to use clashing harmonies that rise up to resolutions. This is central to the way I composed this piece. At the end, repeating "burns" serve as embers that fly out of the flames as the desire is quelled. We end on a beautifully resolved A major add 9 chord, which is the dominant in the tonal key center of D. The story isn't over, but the speaker's part is. The close interval is present here as well, which reminds us of the speaker's feelings. When performing this piece, know that a lot of emotional exposure will be necessary for the performers to convey the true meaning of the work. The students will need to remember that feeling of burning desire to know what this piece truly means. - Program note by composer