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Love Songs & Summer Lilies (1998 and 2000, rev. 2016)

by Thomas Oboe Lee

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1.
"This Face" ... Arthur Gorges (1557-1625) 03:52
lyrics
This face so fair first bent mine eye This tongue so sweet then drew mine ear His wit so sharp then hit my heart Mine eye to like his face doth lead Mine ear to learn his tongue doth teach My heart to love his wit doth move This face with beams doth blind mine eye This tongue with sound doth charm mine ear His wit with art doth knit my heart Mine eye with life his face doth feed Mine ear with hope his tongue doth feast My heart with skill his wit doth fill O face with frowns wrong not mine eye O tongue with checks vex not mine ear O wit with smart wound not my heart This eye shall joy his face to serve This ear shall yield his tongue to trust This heart shall swear his wit to fear
2.
"Love Thou Art High" ... Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 01:27
lyrics
Love, thou art high I cannot climb thee But, were it Two Who knows but we Taking turns at the Chimborazo Ducal at last stand up by thee Love thou art deep I cannot cross thee But, were there Two Instead of One Rower, and Yacht some sovereign Summer Who knows but we'd reach the Sun? Love thou art Veiled A few behold thee Smile and alter and prattle and die Bliss were an Oddity without thee Nicknamed by God Eternity
3.
"A Birthday" ... Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) 03:45
lyrics
My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because cause my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And pea-cocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleur-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me, to me.
4.
"Pairs" ... Philip Booth (1925-2007) 02:00
lyrics
Years now, good days more than half the year, they row late afternoons out through the harbor to the bell, a couple with gray hair, an old green rowboat. Given sun, their four oars, stroke by stroke, glint wet, so far away that even in light air their upwind voices barely carry. No words translate to us on shore, more than a mile from where they pull and feather. All we hear is how, like sea-ducks, they seem constantly to murmur. And even after summer's gone, as they row out and home, now and again again we hear, we cannot help but hear, their years of tidal laughter.
5.
"Summer Lilies" ... Mary Oliver (1935-2019) 04:51
lyrics
Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies. If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere. And if your spirit carries within the thorn that is heavier than lead if it's all you can do to keep on trudging there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy whether or not you have ever dared to pray.

about

"Love Songs" and "Summer Lilies" were commissioned by Peter Papesch for his wife, Barbara ...

credits

released September 6, 2017

Peggo Horstmann Hodes, soprano
Calvin Herst, piano

Music by Thomas Oboe Lee

Recorded in the Fraser Studio at WGBH
May 25, 2017

Antonio Oliart, audio engineer and editor

© Departed Feathers Music, Inc. - BMI

Photo credit: Thomas Oboe Lee

YouTube link: youtu.be/7n0B0XQkJy8

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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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