Birches

Birches was written several years ago and was one of the very first works I wrote after starting my Bachelor of Music degree. The work is very much inspired by the poem by Robert Frost of the same name. The first few lines begin as follows:
  
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.  

If you haven’t read the poem before, I recommend it. The imagery and the themes of youth, spirituality, natural world and the human imagination, make it beautiful in Frosts unique, controlled and metaphorical style of writing.  In particular, the crystalline imagery of vast snowfields and bent Birches really spoke to me musically. The opening lines capture this, as well as a sense of fragility that I find runs through Frost’s poem.  A few other lines worth mentioning here are:

 I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.

The work’s structure reflects this journey, moving from the snowy ground, up, up, towards the heavens, only to fall back to earth.

Performed by Brijette Tubb

Birches for Solo Flute

Performed by members from the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra

Topography

Sung by Charity Clark with accompanist Stephen Scarlato

Based on the poem "Bivouac on a Mountain Side" by Walt Whitman:

I see before me now a traveling army halting, 
Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of 
summer, 
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising 
high, 
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily 
seen, 
The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the 
mountain, 
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, 
flickering, 
And over all the sky-the sky! far, far out of reach, studded, 
breaking out, the eternal stars.

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

An excerpt from "Piano Trio" by Elizabeth Younan (2018). Performed by Jenny Chen (piano), William Tsutomu Copeland (violin), and Francis Carr (cello), at Field Concert Hall, the Curtis Institute of Music, 12/12/18.

Birches for Solo Flute

Chris Healey - Composer

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