A California Song! (2020)

for Deep Listening Ensemble, two pianos, and spoken voice
5 minutes

Premiere: CSUF New Music Ensemble on December 21, 2020 (virtual performance)

Program Notes & Text

As a certified Deep Listener, Pamela Madsen studied and worked with Pauline Oliveros since 1990s. Pamela Madsen’s A California Song! Combines the sonic landscape of Oliveros' Windhorse with the expansive resonant framework of work for two pianos (Josiah Groot and Mathew Yang) in A California Song! with spoken text by Flynt Burton of poem by Walt Whitman.

Poems 1 & 2 from Song of the Redwood-Tree by Walt Whitman


  1. A CALIFORNIA song! A prophecy and an indirection–a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
    A chorus of dryads, fading, departing–or hamadryads departing;
    A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
    Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
    Farewell, my brethren,
    Farewell, O earth and sky–farewell, ye neighboring waters;
    My time has ended, my term has come.


  2. Along the northern coast,
    Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves,
    In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino country,
    With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and hoarse,
    With crackling blows of axes, sounding musically, driven by strong arms,
    Riven deep by the sharp tonques of the axes–there in the Redwood forest dense,
    I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.
    The choppers heard not–the camp sharties echoed not;
    The quick-ear'd teamsters, and chain and jack-screw men, heard not,
    As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years, to join the refrain;
    But in my soul I plainly heard.
    Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
    Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high,
    Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs–out of its foot-thick bark,
    That chant of the seasons and time–chant, not of the past only, but the future.

Perusal Score

Purchase

To purchase the scores and parts, email Pamela Madsen directly at pmadsen@fullerton.edu.

Performances

December 16, 2020 | CSUF New Music Ensemble (virtual)
December 5, 2020 | CSUF New Music Ensemble & CSUF Woodwind Quintet (virtual)