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I The Fly (excerpt) (1' 48 " -- 1.7 MB) | download |
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II. The Flea (complete) (54" -- 848 KB) | download |
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| III. The Noiseless, Patient Spider (complete) (3' 51" -- 3.6 MB) | download | |
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Metaphor was commissioned by the Ithaca College School of Music and premiered by them in 1993. Each of the three poems, with texts by Blake, Dunne, and Whitman, uses an insect as a metaphor for for human expedience.
Texts |
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| I. The Fly William Blake (1757-1827) Little Fly Thy summers play, My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink & sing: Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength & breath: And the want Of thought is death Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die. |
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II. The Flea John Donne (1753-1631) Mark but this flea, and mark in this, |
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| III. A Noiseless Patient Spider Walt Whitman (1819-1892) A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. |
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Caltabiano’s Metaphor of 1994 [was] a particularly enjoyable work on that program. Caltabiano went farther than any other composer on the program in attempting to create a modern musical language for chorus, singable yet not predictable. He set texts by Blake, Donne, and Whitman, in which arthropods are “metaphors” for states of the human condition: “The Fly,” “The Flea,” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider.” Volti brought out most impressive sounds from its palette, such as emergence from nearly-nothing and soft sotto-voce murmuring. The third piece inhabited the most distinctive harmonic world, resonant but not triadic, with haunting seconds and tritones. Warm applause and hoots from the audience confirmed Caltabiano’s success.
-- San Francisco Classical Voice
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