Composer:
Robert Hugill
Instrumentation:
Saxophone and Piano
Details:
Six Pieces for B flat Tenor Saxophone and Piano from poems by Constantine Cavafy
Difficulty:
Advanced: approx Grade 8+
Publisher:
Spherical Editions
Date:
1997
Score sample:
Click here to view
Programme notes:
1 Their Beginning
Their illicit pleasure has been fulfilled.
They get up and dress quickly, without a word.
They come out of the house separately, furtively;
and as they move off down the street a bit unsettled,
it seems they sense that something about them betrays
what kind of bed they’ve been lying on.
But what profit for the life of the artist:
Tomorrow, the day after, or years later, he’ll give voice
To the strong lines that had their beginning here.
Their Beginning
2 Come Back
Come back often and take hold of me,
Sensation that I love, come back and take hold of me-
when the body’s memory revives
and an old longing again passed through the blood,
when lips and skin rememberand hands feel as though they touch again.
Come back often, take hold of me in the night
When lips and skin remember…
Come Back
I didn’t restrain myself. I gave in completely and went,
Went to those pleasure that were half real,
Half wrought by my own mind,Went into the brilliant night
And drank strong wine,
The way champions of pleasure drink.
I Went
3 Chandelier
In a room-empty, small, four walls only,
covered with green cloth
a beautiful chandelier burns, all fire;
and each of its flames kindles
a sensual fever, a lascivious urge.
In the small room, radiantly lit
By the chandelier’s hot fir,
No ordinary light breaks out.
Not for timid bodies
The lust of this heat.
Chandelier
4 Let me stop here
Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile.
The brilliant blue of the morning sea, of the cloudless sky,
the shore yellow; all lovely,all bathed in light.
Let me stand here. And let me pretend I see all this
(I actually did see it for a minute when I first stopped)
and not my usual day-dreams here too,
my memories, those sensual images.
Morning Sea
Try to keep them, poet,
Those erotic visions of yours,
however few of them there are that can be stilled.
Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.
Try to hold them, poet,
When they come alive in your mind
at night or in the noonday brightness.
When They Come Alive
5 Grey
While looking at a half-grey opal
I remembered two lovely grey eyes;
it must be twenty years ago I saw them. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We were lovers for a month.
Then he went away to work, I think in Smyrna,
and we never met again.
Those grey eyes will have lost their charm-if he’s still alive;
that lovely face will have spoiled.
Memory, keep them the way they were.
And, memory, whatever you can bring back of that love,
Whatever you can, bring back tonight.
Grey
6 December 1903
And if I can’t speak about my love
if I don’t talk about you hair, your lips, your eyes,
still your face that I keep within my heart,
the sound of your voice that I keep within my mind,
the days of September rising in my dreams,
give shape and colour to my words, my sentences,
whatever theme I touch, whatever thought I utter.
December, 1903
Astute Music