dREAMSCAPES
Read by the Towson University Chorale

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dREAMSCAPES dREAMSCAPES  rOLLING eVER aFTER mOONLIGHT fORGING oTHER rEALITIES. eTHEREAL vOLUMES, eTHEREAL rEAMLS. dream forever.     Craig L. Sparks Some notes from the composer: To understand this piece of music, I must first begin with a discussion of the text.  The text is structured around the capitalization.  Each word begins with a lower case letter, and these lowercase letters combine to form the last phrase, "dream forever."  This is fundamental to the meaning of the text; to the universality and timelessness of the poem. Of course, the problem then becomes "How do you set a poem to music when its structure is so fundamentally interwoven with the visualization of it?"  The answer was to incorporate the visual structure of the poem into the sonic structure of the music. The introduction of the piece is a presentation of all the ideas that occur in the piece in a natient form.  This works to establish a context for the rest of the work to follow.  It is, in essence, the sonic ink and paper with all the potential for a song waiting for the impetus to create. The body of the piece manipulates and develops this material in little vignettes of sound.  These are the "ethereal volumes" and "ethereal realms" which the poem refers to.  Each vignette extracts a part of the text, a section of the harmonies from the introduction, and small melodic fragments.  Each one adopts its own character, whether it is the eternity of "forever," the flowing landscape of "rolling. . .moonlight," or the passing glimpses into the "ethereal." All of these thoughts congeal at the end of the piece to form one final, coherent statement.  This is the only time that the full text and melody are presented as a coherent whole.  The listener has heard fragmented bits and pieces of this through the entire piece, and now it congeals into the revelation that, like in the poem, there has been a beautiful thought running as an undercurrent through the piece. At the very end of the piece, the essence of eternity is captured in the long open statement of "dream forever."  This must sound timeless, and shimmer like moonlight reflecting off ocean waters.  When performed right, the music should just linger in the air after the piece is stopped, and the listeners and audience should walk away with the song still in their hearts.  It is one of the simplest moments I have ever composed, and one of my favorites as well.