phillip golub
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  • home
  • music
    • notated concert music
    • improvised music
    • piano performance
  • loose cadences (blog)
  • score preparation
  • bio
  • contact
Greyheaded Schoolchildren (2014)

baritone and piano

4 minutes

Greyheaded Schoolchildren
by Charles Simic

Old men have bad dreams,
So they sleep little.
They walk on bare feet
Without turning on the lights,
Or they stand leaning
On gloomy furniture
Listening to their hearts beat.

The one window across the room
Is black like a blackboard.
Every old man is alone
In this classroom, squinting
At that fine chalk line
That divides being-here
From being-here-no-more.

No matter. It was a glass of water
They were going to get,
But not just yet.
They listen for mice in the walls,
A car passing on the street,
Their dead fathers shuffling past them
On their way to the kitchen.
PictureCharles Simic
At the FUBiS program in Berlin in the summer of 2014, our teacher Samuel Adler asked each of the program participant to write a song. I chose Charles Simic's "Greyheaded Schoolchildren."

Dr. Adler, when I showed him the poem at the first lesson, said, "It's a sad poem... especially for me." He then instructed me to write three piano introductions to the song. I picked the first, quiet lonely notes at the ends of the range of the piano, and went on to set the poem somewhat ironically and quite dramatically.

I hope that one day this song becomes one in a set of Simic settings.

Score