SKU: PR.111401600

UPC: 680160003204. Text: Kenneth Rexroth. Kenneth Rexroth. Kenneth Rexroth.

Four Songs after Rexroth is a night cycle of poems and Chinese translations by Kenneth Rexroth that were chosen so that they might present a linear, nocturnal musical experience. The first song begins in the aura of twilight, before proceeding in the next two songs into a night of innermost thoughts and remembrances. In the last song, at dawn, transfiguration and transcendence is attained. The musical settings seek to evoke the beauty, mystery, anxiety, and sadness of the texts; this leads, in the third song - the emotional crux of the cycle - to the abandonment of conventional text declamation in favor of a non-verbal expression.