Catalogue
5 derbies
Programme Note available | View performance history...
SMC Holdings
Programme Note
5 derbies sets five poems (well, four plus one line of another) by the New England poet E.E. Cummings, taken from manuscripts and published work dating from 1922 (5 derbies-with-men-in-them), 1940 (these children, fl, am was), and 1963 (Now I lay).
The work reflects something of Cummings' fragmentation of language, and focuses on the somewhat fleeting interconnections of images and words: dreams and dreamlessnesses; songs of children and of stone and snow gone; coughing and spitting of men; coughing and coffee; five ideas and five men in derbies; and probably more besides.
The players have some freedom to extemporize at various points in the piece.
