Program Notes for Coro Allegro Concert

March 9, 2025

On the poems:

One of the most obvious aspects of the “fruit” poems set here is that the fruit has gone bad in some way, or the scene is off. In “Perfection”, the apple is visually beautiful, but rotten. The fruit in “This Is Just To Say” is delicious but it was meant for someone else to enjoy. The “Wild Orchard” is beautifully green, but the excess of late summer and approaching decay is already apparent. In “The Bare Tree,” the fruit is non-existent.

In the work of another poet, this might be a troubling sign – a metaphor for old age, or, on a larger scale, the breakdown of the social order (“the celebrated revolution is accomplished” is a line from Williams’ poem “The Orchard”). But for the most part, the poems aren’t about fruit. They are about people - people who are going about their lives and enjoying themselves immensely. “The Poor Old Woman”, and the protagonists in “This Is Just To Say” and “Perfection”, for example, are beside themselves with joy.

Overall, if there is a main theme in this work, it is probably that Williams finds great joy in simply describing what he is seeing. The thread that connects his poems is his unique, astute observation. One can root around in these brief, almost extemporaneous poems looking for a big motive (an activity that will bear little fruit!). But there is depth. It emerges from his subtle, dry sense of humor or, alternatively, from the powerful visual language that arises from the beauty he sees in natural decay and change of seasons. For me personally, humor is the key to understanding his work. Williams was able to appreciate life, its beauty and its imperfections. That is no mean feat, one worth considering in today’s fractured world.

On the music:

The Orchard had its start many years ago. I happened upon William Carlos Williams’ “Perfection” and chose to set it for a cappella mixed chorus. Around 2008 I pulled it back out and decided that it would be fun to create a song cycle built around Williams’ poems having to do with fruit. Later on, well into the work, it occurred to me that since each poem was set in a specific time of year, I should order the songs according to the natural progression of the seasons. I spent some time determining where to start and where to end, but I kept returning to the idea that the piece should wind up where it began - with “Perfection.”

I also felt it was important that each song have its own distinct musical expression. The tango that forms the backdrop to “A Poor Old Woman” is quite different from the twelve-tone setting of “This Is Just To Say” which is itself miles removed from Robert Schumann’s setting of Heinrich Heine’s poem “im wunderschoensten Monat Mai” a line from which I incorporate into “The Orchard”, the third song of the set. The instrumentation varies from song to song as well. Flute and horn are often paired up within movements, but the only time the chorus and soloist are called upon together is in “Wild Orchard” (although even there, they do not perform at the same time.)

The original work, for solo baritone, chorus, flute, horn and piano, was entitled The Orchard: Songs of Love and Fruit. It was premiered by Coro Allegro in 2013. In this new version, the piano is replaced by string orchestra and an additional movement (“The Poor Old Woman”) has been added. The seasonal organization of the movements has been maintained, but the new movement now serves as a prologue and the fourth, “This Is Just To Say”, functions as an interlude.

Greg Bullen