for female voice (soprano or mezzo-soprano) and orchestra (2012/2018/2025)
13 minutes
Instrumentation
3*3*3*3* / 4330 / timp / 3 perc / hp / strings
3 Flutes (3rd also Piccolo), 2 Oboes, English Horn, 2 Clarinets in A, Bass Clarinet in B♭, 2 Bassoons, Contrabassoon
4 Horns in F, 3 Trumpets in C, 2 Tenor Trombones, Bass Trombone
1 Timpani player
3 Percussion players: Glockenspiel, Suspended Cymbal (small), Triangle, Vibraphone (with bow), 2 Suspended Cymbals (medium, large), Crotales,
Bass Drum, Tam-tam, Tambourine
1 Harp (2 strongly preferred)
Strings (Double Basses: most, if not all, must have low extension)
Text
In English by William Blake:
[…] Love!
Flower of morning! I weep on the verge
Of Non-entity; how wide the Abyss
Between Ahania and thee!
I lie on the verge of the deep,
I see thy dark clouds ascend,
I see thy black forests and floods,
A horrible waste to my eyes!
[…]
Why didst thou despise Ahania,
To cast me from thy bright presence
Into the World of Loneness [?]
[…]
Where is my golden palace [?]
Where my ivory bed [?]
Where the joy of my morning hour [?]
Where the sons of eternity singing
To awake bright Urizen, my king,
To arise to the mountain sport,
To the bliss of eternal valleys;
To awake my king in the morn
To embrace Ahania’s joy
On the bredth of his open bosom,
From my soft cloud of dew to fall
In showers of life on his harvests [?]
When he gave my happy soul
To the sons of eternal joy;
When he took the daughters of life
into my chambers of love;
Swell’d with ripeness & fat with fatness,
Bursting on winds my odors,
My ripe figs and rich pomegranates
In infant joy at thy feet,
O Urizen, sported and sang.
[…]
The sweat poured down thy temples [;]
To Ahania return’d in evening
The moisture awoke to birth
My mother’s-joys, sleeping in bliss.
But now, alone, over rocks, mountains,
Cast out from thy lovely bosom.
Cruel jealousy, selfish fear,
self-destroying: how can delight
Renew in these chains of darkness,
Where bones of beasts are strown
On the bleak and snowy mountains,
Where bones form the birth are buried
Before they see the light [?]
— BLAKE, William. The Book of Ahania, Lambeth, 1795, Chapter V.
Commission
Commissioned by Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. Original version for voice and piano commissioned by Alte Oper Frankfurt.
First performance
First performance of the revised version:
September 5, 2025
Milan, Italy / Auditorium di Milano
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano
Ambur Braid, soprano / Samy Moussa, conductor
First performance of the 2018 version:
July 13, 2018
Hamburg, Germany / Sankt Michaelis
Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra
Mireille Lebel, mezzo-soprano / Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Pairing suggestions
Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde – Vorspiel
Gustav Mahler: Kindertotenlieder; Symphony No. 4
Richard Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder
Karol Szymanowski: Penthesilea
Jean Sibelius: Luonnotar
Poulenc: Stabat Mater
Monteverdi: Lamento d’Arianna
Richard Strauss: Salome’s Final Scene
Gustav Holst: The Mystic Trumpeter
Alexander Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy
Alexander Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau
Arnold Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande
Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Access
Available for hire.
Contact Nicolas Farmer: nicolas.farmer(a)samymoussa.com