Resounding Verse
Join music theorist Stephen Rodgers as he explores how composers transform words into songs. Each episode discusses one poem and one musical setting of it. The music is diverse—covering a variety of styles and time periods, and focusing on composers from underrepresented groups—and the tone is accessible and personal. If you love poetry and song, no matter your background and expertise, this show is for you. Episodes are 20-40 minutes long and air every couple of months.
Resounding Verse
The River: Nathaniel Bellows and Sarah Kirkland Snider
Nathaniel Bellows’ poem and Sarah Kirkland Snider's haunting setting of it—from her song cycle Unremembered—revisit the site of a childhood trauma and meditate on innocence and the mechanisms of memory.
The performance of the song features vocalists Padma Newsome, DM Stith, and Shara Worden, and the Unremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sound, ICE, The Knights, and Sō Percussion), conducted by Edwin Outwater.
In the episode I discuss Nathaniel Bellows' illustration that accompanies his poem; you can find this illustration, as well as the others associated with the song cycle, on the Unremembered website.
The River
by Nathaniel Bellows
On the banks
The wash so brown
The shadows blue
They’re black
I saw the form
Astride the loam
Splayed out upon
Its back
A bear, a dog
A bed, a log
A child’s eyes
Are pure
Until the hands
Of the missing man
Were clear against
The dew
The river’s flow
A blackened bow
That tied around
Our town
Had sapped his life
Like a lantern’s light
Buried
Underground