Whirlpool - Matthew Schultheis - The New York Virtuoso Singers Harold Rosenbaum, Conductor

Program Note
Whirlpool was conceived as a preliminary study for a larger planned work (for soprano and chamber orchestra), setting different excerpts from Eliot’s monumental The Waste Land. The excerpts for this work were chosen for the power of their imagery and their “direct shock of poetic intensity,” as Eliot put it. At its climax, the imagery of the text overtakes the music, and the final third of the piece is entirely wordless.
Text
Excerpts from T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land from IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool.
from V. What the Thunder said
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
first published 1922 (New York: Boni and Liveright)