Evangeline, May 2022

Most of my music, structurally speaking, is very simple, like a pop song. Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Break, Verse, Chorus, rinse, repeat. Evangeline as recorded here has a palindrome structure, which I arrived at without any malice of forethought: ABCDE F EDCBA + coda. The A-E segments are contrasting episodes, and the “F” is a double time break. It just worked out that way that the pieces played together forwards and backwards.

The Band and Emmylou Harris covered this ground in their distinctive fashion back in 1978. I do miss Levon Helm and Richard Manual. Longfellow’s poem still resonates in 2022. I like Martin Johnson Heade’s paintings and so I used them with my music.

Evangeline

Prologue:

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,—
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1847