This is a truly beautiful piece of music by composer Stella Sung, showing off her many talents. Below are links to both audio and the short film of the premiere of “High Ashes for Baritone and Orchestra” by composer Stella Sung, using three poems from his book High Ashes: “Returner (I): The Arrival,” part four of “Alpine,” and “Rondel.” The piece was commissioned by German baritone Maximilian Krummen as a companion song cycle for Gustav Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” (“Songs of a Wayfarer”). It appeared as part of an evening called “Mahler to the Max,” at Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra in Appleton, Wisconsin, along with a premiere of Evan Williams’ “Titan” and Mahler’s First Symphony, April 27th, 2024, conducted by Kevin F.E. Sütterlin. Check it out.

“Returner (I): The Arrival”

The edges of the edifice, made of many ages,
Come slowly into view but make no sense.
Roman vaults arc on earlier ruins.
Traceries curl inward to thorny knots
In Gothic panes on Byzantine arcades,
Norman towers braced by Victorian iron,
Dried limestone waterspouts shaped as harpies,
Wings curled forward to fall like waves.
A creek haunts the black firs, surfacing
From frozen pits of chalk. Mazing, it makes its way
Through the garden and disappears to earth again.

“Alpine” part four

Though I can’t see the peak, I know its shape
At night as a space where the stars
Go out around the edges of the landscape,
Surfacing snout of black that bars
 
The starlight, crypt of ice and ancient rock:
Unattainable recess,
Measured only by what it blocks,
Necklaced in witches-thimble and bittercress,

Created as it erases, and lit
In contrary by black forced high,
Forged in furnaces of frost, and infinite
Energies, to consume us, and the sky.

“Rondel”

We don’t give much for all we take,
But still we like to think we do.
The sun will come to kill the dew,
And weeds wind up the garden stake.

The pines throw shadows on the lake,
Spearing some black into the blue.
We don’t give much for all we take,
But still we like to think we do.

We’re never new as when we wake
And think our dreaming lives are true.
The moments we’re like wind are few
And leave as fast as what we make.
We don’t give much for all we take,
But still we like to think we do.