Programme note

I wrote this piece for three friends—Rosanna Cooper (mezzo-soprano), Flic Cowell (oboe), and Alexander Oon (horn)—who were taking the Contemporary Music in Action module (in Royal College of Music). I knew that they needed a piece intended for the purposes of examination (think ‘showcase’ of technical mastery), yet at the same time I wanted to find a reasonable purpose, or a kind of ‘contextual grounding’, for the use of extended instrumental techniques. Crudely speaking, I had at my disposal a physical human voice, an air column, and a coil of metal; the latter two can be pushed to sound like distorted or ‘repressed’ voices.

I pursued this thread and started from a somewhat oblique angle by sourcing for poems with themes such as ‘freedom’, ‘oppression’, ‘unheard voices’, etc. After rounding up several potentially suitable texts, Angelou’s proved particularly appealing, with the additional animated metaphor of a bird—two in fact; one caged (in whom I see Angelou) and the other free (possibly Angelou’s ideal image of herself). This offered numerous opportunities for the use of multiphonics. Singing into the horn reflects not only two sonic forces (horn’s voice and player’s voice) attempting to overcome each other, but also a conceptual ‘caging’ (trapping the player’s voice within the metallic instrument). Angelou’s text was simply calling out to be set.

In allusion to the themes of ‘freedom’ and ‘oppression’, and also to the socio-political zeitgeist in which Angelou lived and breathed, I quoted the tune from ‘We Shall Overcome’, a gospel hymn turned protest song of the American Civil Rights Movement. The hymn becomes the ‘caged bird’s tune’, which the mezzo-soprano timidly sings in bb. 46–58, but does not complete the final line. Deprived of the final line’s melodic notes to set the remaining words, the singer is unable to ‘sing of freedom’.

In this piece, I imagine a dramatic response to American poet Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird:

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on that distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft

through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a bright morning lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on that distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

Copyright © 1983 by Maya Angelou

Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

The text appears to already possess a ‘verse-refrain’ structure, which readily lends itself for song-setting. I have remained faithful to the original layout of Angelou’s text for most parts of the piece. However, I have decided not to repeat the refrain (‘The caged bird sings…’) per se at the end, in the spirit of maintaining a teleological narrative.

In the first instance of the refrain (bb. 46–58), I removed the final word—‘freedom’—as a symbolic gesture; freedom cannot be not sung of. It is in this light that the listener subsequently arrives at the end of the penultimate stanza (‘…opens his throat to sing…’; b. 78), whose open-ended verbal syntax allows for a direct ‘splice’ into the final line of the refrain (‘…of freedom.’; bb. 80–83). This happens as the oboe and horn speed through bb. 77–80 with a desperate ‘caged bird’s tune’, which was previously properly sung in bb. 46–58. Imaginatively, this frees the caged bird of his ‘melodic baggage’, so he can move on to ‘sing of freedom’.