Words and Music: Chuckk Hubbard
Soprano: Colleen McMillan
Piano: Emily Newell
This was a sonnet inspired by early childhood memories, mixed with disillusionment in “man’s search for meaning”. Nihilism, resignation towards mortality, etc., etc.
I designed this rhyme scheme to fit my meandering style of writing:
ABA BCB CDCD EE FF
I think the sonnet was written in 1998 or ’99. I wrote the music around 2005, in college.
The music was partially inspired by the work of Trio Kavkasia, who sang Georgian music which supposedly had no notion of an octave, but used perfect fifths as equivalents. I also took a few ideas from John Chalmers’ Divisions of the Tetrachord. So, I chose a mode with a range of a perfect fifth and repeated it. I believe I changed the mode in the middle, when the boy walks into the living room (when he’s born) but kept the fifth equivalent. Changed back when he goes back to bed (when he dies, you get the idea).
The echo of a distant engine’s call
has died, and from his room a boy is driven,
teddy bear in hand, to roam the hall;
He hears the whispers of the television,
muted voices heard within the womb,
and feels his mother’s arms around him, even
as he steps into the living room
to find his parents lying slumped together
on the sofa, snoring to the tune
of nightly network snow. Not certain whether
seeking comfort would be justified,
he stands a moment, scratches his backside,
and hugs his teddy until, his head
hung low, he turns and wanders back to bed.