Four Rumi Songs (2006)

for mixed chorus, a cappella - 7'

At the request of Frederick Jodry, Four Rumi Songs was written in the Spring of 2006 and premiered by the Brown University Chorus that May. The work has subsequently been performed by Cappella Gloriana in San Diego, CA, and under the direction of Kyle Siddons in New York, NY.

Brown University Chorus in performance, 2002

Texts

1. The Freshness

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

2. The way of love is not...

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.

3. Flutes For Dancing

It's lucky to hear the flutes for dancing
coming down the road. The ground is glowing.
The table set in the yard.

We will drink all this wine tonight
because it's Spring. It is.
It's a growing sea. We're clouds
over the sea,
or flecks of matter
in the ocean when the ocean seems lit from within.
I know I'm drunk when I start this ocean talk.

Would you like to see the moon split
in two with one throw?

4. Water From Your Spring

What was in that candle's light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend! The form of our love
is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.
There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something
from your soul. I drank water

from your spring and felt
the current take me.

Nathan J. Stumpff, Composer