FULL THE TOWER AND THE GARDEN (Gregory Spears) South Bend IN 2019

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: The Tower and the Garden  
• Composer: Spears Gregory   
• Libretto: various Catholic poets (see below)  
• Venue & Opera Company: Auditorium of Indiana University, South Bend  
• Recorded: May 10, 2019
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers:
• Conductor: Carmen-Helena Téllez  
• Orchestra: Kosmologia, Euclid String Quartet  
• Chorus: The Crossing  
• Stage Director:   
• Stage Designer: Camilla Tassi  
• Costume Designer:   
• Lighting Designer: Nich Sikorsky  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Carmen-Helena Téllez  
• Date Published: 2020  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  “The Tower and the Garden” collects the reflections of Catholic poets about the destruction of the environment.

  TEXTS:

  I. / IV.

  “80” from Cables to the Ace or Familiar Liturgies of Misunderstanding by Thomas Merton (1968). Used with permission.

  Slowly slowly,
  comes Christ through the garden,
  speaking to the sacred trees,
  their branches bear his light, without harm

  . Slowly, slowly,
  comes Christ through the ruins,
  seeking the lost disciple
  , a timid one,
  too literate
  to believe words.
  So he hides.

  Slowly, slowly,
  Christ rises on the cornfields.
  It is only the harvest moon.
  The disciple turns over in his sleep
  and murmurs:“ My regret!”

  II.

  “In the Land of Shinar” from Evening Train by Denise Levertov (1992). Used with permission.

  Each day the shadow swings
  round from west to east till night overtakes it, hiding
  half the slow circle. Each year the tower grows taller, spiralling
  out of its monstrous root-circumference, ramps and colonnades
  mounting tier by lessening tier the way a searching bird of prey wheels and mounts the sky, driven
  by hungers unsated by blood and bones.
  And the shadow lengthens, our homes nearby are dark
  half the day, and the bricklayers, stonecutters, carpenters bivouac
  high in the scaffolded arcades, further and further above the ground,
  weary from longer and longer comings and goings.At times
  a worksong twirls down the autumn leaf of a phrase, but mostly
  we catch
  only the harsher sounds of their labor itself, and that seems only
  an echo now of the bustle and clamor there was long ago
  when the fields were cleared, the hole was dug, the foundations laid
  with boasting and fanfares, the work begun.
  The tower, great circular honeycomb, rises and rises and still
  the heavens arch above and evade it, while the great shadow engulfs
  more and more of the land, our lives
  dark with the fear a day will blaze, or a full-moon night defining
  with icy brilliance the dense shade, when all the immense
  weight of this wood and brick and stone and metal and massive
  weight of dream and weight of will
  will collapse, crumble, thunder and fall, fall upon us, the dwellers in shadow.

  III.

  “Dungeness Documentary” from Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems by Keith Garebian (2008). All rights reserved by the author. Used with permission.

  Timbers black with pitch shiver on the shingle.
  Gulls wheel,
  squabble over the fishermen’s catch, quicksilver of the sea.
  The tide invades the arid strand,
  home to larks and tough grasses, cormorants skim the waves.
  A cottage with two prospects (the old lighthouse
  and nuclear plant)
  both lit by sights and sighs. Barbed wire around your garden cannot keep melancholy at bay.

  IV. (Reprise of poem I)

  Slowly slowly,
  comes Christ through the garden,
  speaking to the sacred trees,
  their branches bear his light, without harm

  . Slowly, slowly,
  comes Christ through the ruins,
  seeking the lost disciple
  , a timid one,
  too literate
  to believe words.
  So he hides.

  Slowly, slowly,
  Christ rises on the cornfields.
  It is only the harvest moon.
  The disciple turns over in his sleep
  and murmurs:“ My regret!”

  The disciple will awaken when he knows history;
  but slowly, slowly,
  the Lord of History weeps into the fire.

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