O Me! O Life! was commissioned by The Esoterics as national winner of the 2007 - 2008 Polyphonos competition. The work received its premiere performance in April, 2008 in the Seattle, Washington area, in a series of concerts featuring premieres of new works by Leonard Enns and Scott Perkins.
I have always felt it important when setting a text to be absolutely faithful to the original. There have of course been countless dabates on this issue. Personally, I feel it important to set a text, whatever its source, in its entirety, without modification, e.g. repeating a text when the author felt it unnecessary. I hope Mr. Whitman will forgive me one slight variance. Though I have notated every word of the text, a short passage, the word "Answer" I have instructed to be performed niente, quite literally "performed" silently. I hear two distinct narrators in the text, or two thoughts of the same narrator, one following some revelation or moment of resolve, with the word "Answer" bridging the two. It seemed a likely candidate for special treatment, outside, perhaps, of the flow of the text.
Can music that is intended to be not performed per se but rather only thought by the performers be music at all? It feels right, but I guess perhaps we'll never truly know for sure.
O Me! O life!...of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless-of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light-of the objects mean-of the struggle ever renewed;
Of the poor results of all-of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest-with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-what good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here-that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)