Am I Too Loud? Poem by gershon hepner

“Am I too loud? ” the man of substance ought
to ask the world, but silence that is good as gold
is rarely a commodity that’s bought,
since drowned by volume in a tale that can’t be told.

“Am I too silent? ” is a question those
whose messages, straight from the heart, are left unsaid,
should ask, because they can’t be heard when they expose
their feelings, and transmute the gold to lead.

Inspired by Bernard Holland’s review of a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert which included William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony, inspired by the poetry of William Blake (“Blake’s Text Write Large and Loud by Bolcom, ” NYT, March 5,2008) :
Blake’s prophetic books, from which these four movements derive, occupy an invented mythological world grounded by political geography. Shaggy chimerical creatures — fiery, thundering and with flapping wings — are personifications of virtue, villainy, love and danger. Blake, on the other hand, is also talking about the American Revolution and revolutions like it. Side by side with the fabulous and the magical are the down-to-earth references to Africa, Spain, France, Canada, Mexico and Peru, not to mention ancient Rome and Jerusalem. We are given a late-18th-century world atlas of social upheaval presented as a hallucination of heaven and hell. The Eighth Symphony is unashamedly theatrical, and Mr. Bolcom’s deep experience and impressive control keep the pot boiling. Such relentless high drama in the hands of huge forces like these could just as easily have run off the tracks, but this is a composer with a singular talent for inflecting words, making them clear and finding just the right orchestral color for the emotion of the moment. If the universal calamities of his first three movements keep our attention, “A Song of Liberty” at the end does something more. With “For every thing that lives is Holy” as the text, rising scales and rich counterpoint in the chorus part create a deeply affirmative ending. Loud though it is, its loudness has substance. I was very moved by it. James Levine conducted. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, prepared by John Oliver, sang difficult music fearlessly and from memory.


3/5/08