Tenor and piano. 4 mins.
Text by Walt Whitman.
Perusal Score
Score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
Program Note
“In his 1882 autobiography Specimen Days, Walt Whitman penned a series of vividly observed miniature prose pieces documenting his impressions of the natural world. Excerpted from an entry dated April 6, the text of Proofs of Coming Fullness describes an early spring morning in which Whitman observes signs of seasonal change. This song was composed as a complementary work to my operatic monodrama The Coming of Spring— which also highlights the phenomena of early spring, as depicted in the art and journals of Charles E. Burchfield —and for World Premiere in conjuction with the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s exhibit Embracing Earth: Burcheld & Whitman.”
Text
“I am sitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of the creek, the surface just rippled by the wind. All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence. […] Then a poor little dead leaf, long frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wild escaped freedom-spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down to the waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. The bushes and trees are yet bare, but the beeches have their wrinkled yellow leaves of last season’s foliage largely left, frequent cedars and pines yet green, and the grass not without proofs of coming fullness. And over all a wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the play of light coming and going, and great fleeces of white clouds swimming so silently.”
From “Specimen Days” (1882) by Walt Whitman.
Performance History
Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo Opera Unlimited (Joe Dan Harper, tenor and Matthew Marco, piano), Buffalo, NY, 8/4/24.