Robert Zimmerman: Compositions

The Sun Rising

play it

baritone soloist with fl+picc+alto fl, ob, cl, bcl, bn, sop sax, tpt,
2 vn, vl, 2 vc, cb, pf, hp, 2 perc

The Sun Rising is one of the first texts I ever attempted to set to music. The poem first came to my attention in 1983, during my senior year as an undergraduate at Reed College—my girlfriend told me it was one of her favorites. She was a singer, so I thought it would be nice to turn the poem into a song. I managed to write a melody and piano accompaniment for the first stanza but after that I bogged down. At the time I didn't have the compositional technique or experience to go any further.

I continued to think about how to set this poem over the years. At some point I began to hear the soprano saxophone as a wordless voice standing in for the sun. With the sound of the saxophone came the sound of jazz—it is nearly impossible for me to separate the two, and the explosive energy of, say, John Coltrane in full flight strikes me as a wonderful analogue for the heat and light of the sun.

I also realized that following the text of the poem straight through from beginning to end wouldn't do justice to the wonderful rhetoric that Donne uses to convey the speaker's sheer arrogance. I began to think of this man addressing the sun as "old fool" as the best kind of egotist—a man who, no doubt, thinks in general he's better than everyone else, but in relation to the people close to him he isn't inclined to think of how he towers over them but instead of how great they must be to be part of his life. This comes through not only in the grand claims he makes for his lover but also his invitation to the sun, near the end of the poem, to bask in their reflected glory.

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late tell me,
Whether both th'Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou lefts them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou sawst yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She's all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine old age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
this bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

      - John Donne